


Messages in Green

by erynwen



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Gore, M/M, Minor Character Death, Rape/Non-con References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-18
Updated: 2011-11-19
Packaged: 2017-10-26 06:04:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/279562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erynwen/pseuds/erynwen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leonard McCoy, professional wizard, private investigator and consultant to the SFPD, is out of his depth as a murder series brings back memories from his past. When Jim Kirk, captain of SF Special Investigations Department, is kidnapped, Leonard has to face this past - and a man he long thought was dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to jactrades for her awesome work as a beta, and for putting up with me to the very last minute. This fic would be a complete mess without her. Also big thanks and cookies to baka_yu for being the world's best sounding borad, for making her way through the very first draft, for cheering and for listening to my constant whining about this piece.  
> Lots of thanks also go to nix_this for her really awesome art and to emmypenny for her great mix.
> 
> This fic is very, very loosely based on "The Dresden Files" by Jim Butcher, but I hope you don't need to know the books to enjoy this story.
> 
> Because I can never stop fiddling with these things, any mistakes you might find are mine.

Messages in Green

A boy in his late teens sits on the grass as he basks in the late September sun, a slight breeze wafting around him.

Leonard picks at the grass, places a blade between his lips. Watches the birds flitting about the trees and the frogs in the nearby pond, and breathes the fresh air, feeling good, relaxed. It’s his first free day in weeks, and he intends to do and think nothing, to just rest his head against the tree he’s leaning on and enjoy the sunlight on his face.

He almost doesn’t notice Bruce walking up the slope until the other boy has come to a halt in front of him, casting a shadow over his face.

Leonard scowls up to him. “Go away.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Bruce says, and sits down facing him with a matching scowl. His hands travel around continuously in the grass, and his eyes roam over the lawn. To Leonard it looks like Bruce is expecting someone or something to jump at him any minute.

“Fine, do what you want. But I’m not talking to you,” Leonard says, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Oh, come on Leonard, don’t be like that. Are you still mad at me for what happened in the lab yesterday?”

Leonard’s scowl deepens as his anger flares. “You hovered a book three feet in the air, and then dropped it on my foot. And it was heavy!”

“That was an accident. Mark distracted me!”

Leonard purses his lips, and decides to ignore Bruce.  
He’s almost back in his hazy, relaxed state, eyes sliding closed, when a sudden movement makes Leonard jump. Bruce has lunged forward, grabbing a frog. He squeezes it as Leonard watches, turning it around in his hands.

“Ever wondered what it feels like, killing something?” Bruce asks.

Leonard continues to watch the boy warily, slightly chilled from his calm tone.  
Bruce wears his hair in a buzz-cut now - which, in Leonard’s opinion, looks very stupid on him. He’s taken to reading books about medieval sorcery lately, drawing the ancient symbols he finds in them into his notebook all the time. Dark clothes only, now, black nail polish, and that ridiculous nickname that Leonard refuses to use - Bruce thinks all of this makes him look special, dangerous. Dark.

To Leonard, he looks like an idiot.

When Leonard had moved in with his mentor Mark a few months ago Bruce was already living there. The three of them rattling around in a house on a hill in the woods of Georgia, far away from people and cities and prying eyes, and Leonard has yet to find a way of coping with Bruce.

Mark, of course, thinks two apprentices is the perfect arrangement. He always teams them up for work and training, but Leonard sports more than one bruise as proof that this is a bad idea.

He doesn’t trust Bruce, even if he can’t say why.  
It’s not like the guy does anything particularly bad. It’s small things, like his knife slipping while cutting potion ingredients, almost hacking off Leonard’s fingers in the process. Or that time they were trying out new spells and Bruce _accidentally_ hit Leonard instead of the old dresser they were practicing on. Leonard had limped for a week.

He had tried to tell Mark about it, but without proof that Bruce was doing this on purpose, Mark had only smiled and told Leonard not to be paranoid. After all, being a wizard is dangerous, Mark had said, ruffling Leonard’s hair.

Leonard still tries to avoid Bruce as best he can.

But Bruce is hard to shake off, and it’s hard to ignore him as he patiently repeats his creepy question.

“Why would I want to kill something?” Leonard leans forward, squirming at the way Bruce holds the frog. He wants to tell him to let it go.

“Because you can,” Bruce answers, a glint in his eyes, tightening his grip slightly on the frog.

+~+

Leonard squints into the sun. He’s not sure what exactly made him think of Bruce now, a decade and a half later. Maybe it’s the boy over there on the grass, heavy book in hand, his shaved head gleaming in the sun. Maybe Leonard’s just getting old and nostalgic.

He crumples up his sandwich wrapper and leaves the park, his mind still somewhere in the past.

A few blocks later, Leonard ascends the steps to his apartment, whistling something he heard on the radio earlier today. Autumn has hit the city. He loves the season, loves the way the air smells around him, and he feels a certain spring in his step. He’s not bouncing. Men his age don’t bounce. He’s just in a good mood, a case finished without anything blown up for once, and there’s a check with a nice number on it in his pocket.

As he’s fumbling with the keys, he finds a plastic wind-up toy, a green animal figurine, sitting at the top of the stairs to his apartment. He eyes it curiously, tilting his head to one side. There aren’t any kids living in this neighborhood, so it’s highly unlikely someone dropped it by accident. The entrance for the building’s other tenants is off to the right, not easily mistaken with his heavy metal door. He’d installed it without his landlord’s knowledge a few years ago after a rather unfortunate encounter with a demon.

It seems the toy is meant for him.

Leonard crouches down, muttering a few Latin words while gesturing with his left hand as he picks the toy up, scowling but pretty sure that it isn’t going to blow up in his face. It tickles something at the back of his mind, like a fact forgotten, a quote from a movie he can’t quite remember.

He takes the toy inside, winds it up, sets it onto his living room table. The sound of the toy fills the room, and he watches it reach the edge of the table, toppling to the floor, as he tries to remember why his heart is racing like mad.


	2. Part 1

“Wait, you’re a what?”

Leonard sighs heavily, mentally cursing himself. The hallway lights above his head flicker, and Leonard takes a deep breath. Better that he calm down before the lights go out completely. The night guard didn’t notice the short flicker, but sudden darkness tends to confuse people, and Leonard’s got enough trouble as it is.

He owns two sets of business cards, neatly separated into the left and the right pockets of his leather coat. The ones from the left say “Leonard McCoy, Private Investigator, SFPD Consultant” and open pretty much every door in San Francisco.  
The ones from the right say “Leonard McCoy, Wizard”.

Apparently, he drew a card from the wrong pocket, and has now to put up with a rambling, confused night guard.

“Like, parties and stuff? My niece is turning seven next month…”

The lights flicker again as Leonard looks down at the night guard, slowly counting to ten.

Everyone looks pale under the fluorescent light of the morgue, except this guy, apparently. It’d take a tan out of a bottle, or constant visits to the salon to get his skin so dark. He’s built; heavy muscles stretching the fabric of his plaid button-down shirt. He fiddles with Leonard’s business card, frowning up to him.

Leonard rolls his eyes.

When Leonard moved to San Francisco, he met a lot of people who reacted to his job like Finnegan the night guard.

Yes, he’s a fully trained wizard, and the only one in California, as far as he knows. Which isn’t surprising, since few wizards made it to the New World in the first place. Most of those old bags preferred the foggy cliffs of Scotland, or the cold woods of Northern France.

In the beginning, Leonard had earned himself enough shaking heads, bulging eyes, and disbelieving stares to figure out he’d better not tell everyone that he could do magic.

That hadn’t kept him from setting up for business, getting a small office in SoMa, and placing an ad in the yellow pages offering his services to the people who needed them.

Finding lost items or persons, providing spells and potions to help people with their daily life. Sleep potions, pick-me-up potions, spells to ward off evil spirits. No love potions, no killing spells, no endless purses.

Ninety percent of the calls he got were people checking to see if he was serious, and most of them wanted to book him for their next party.

But the other ten percent? The ones who wanted to test him or believe in him or were just desperate enough to try anything?

They paid his rent and helped spread his reputation around enough to land him a deal with the police.

He was called in for the cases no one had an explanation for, the ones that just had this certain lack of logic that most people would try to ignore, to explain away with some hand-waving claim of science rather than acknowledging the obvious.

The Special Investigations Department had been set up years ago to look into the cases where something odd was going on - and to make sure that, on paper, they looked like usual cases. Vampire attacks, troll rampages, werewolves, that kind of thing.

The former Captain, a middle-aged man named Pike, had originally turned to him with a series of mysterious disappearances which Leonard tracked to a troll that had taken up residence beneath the Golden Gate Bride. And even if Pike still doubted that Leonard was a wizard after that case, he eventually admitted that Leonard did a good job as a private investigator.

Leonard had even become used to the fact that most of the officers at SI didn’t really believe in the things they were investigating. He turned a deaf ear on their stupid remarks and ignored the doubtful head shakes.

When Pike had retired after a rough case tied him to a wheelchair, he had made Leonard an official consultant to the SFPD. Useful enough, even if the contract didn’t pay that well, since SI was at the very end of the bureaucratic food chain.

Of course, the badge that comes with the job lies forgotten in his apartment. He even knows exactly where he’d put it down: on the table next to that paperback he was reading when Captain Kirk’s call had interrupted him.

He really is getting old.

“Couldn’t you just call Kirk and tell him I’m here?” Leonard asks Finnegan, trying hard to not sound annoyed, but failing to keep his ire out of his voice.

And, as if he’s just been waiting for Leonard to say the words, Kirk walks out then from the examination rooms, wearing a smile that seems a bit out of place in the greenish light of the morgue.

Jim Kirk, still in his late twenties, could easily work as a a model or an actor the way he looks in his baggy clothes and with his disarrayed hair. The boyish grin he flashes at Leonard from time to time makes him look even younger than he is.

The first time they worked together Leonard had found out, to his surprise, that there’s something behind the good looks. Jim’s mind is sharp and his instincts are even sharper. Leonard had watched him, realizing how he owns a certain authority, something that made it easy to follow him, even though he’s younger than most of the other officers.

As Jim walks towards the night guard’s desk Leonard remembers their first lunch together. Jim had told him how he made his way through police academy: fast. The youngest to graduate from the place in years, the youngest to become captain, the youngest to get his own department – even if that department _is_ SI.

Whenever Leonard visits Jim at the police station, it isn’t hard to see the smirks of some of the other officers when Jim walks by, because he landed in Special Investigations instead of somewhere more prestigious. But when Leonard mentioned it once, Jim seemed unfazed, shrugging most of it off as jealousy.

Like now, when Jim doesn’t seem to notice the small smirk on the night guard’s face as he bends down to take the business card from the guy’s thick fingers.

“It’s okay, Cupcake, the man’s with me.” Jim hands the business card back to Leonard, flashing him a grin. “I was wondering what was taking you so long.”

Leonard slips the small piece of paper back into his coat pocket – the right one – and steps through the door Jim’s holding open for him.

They walk down the brightly lit corridor for a few steps before Leonard looks at Jim beside him and asks “Cupcake?”

“Sure. He’s so sweet, I just can’t get enough of him,” Jim answers with a smile on his face.

Leonard snorts as they continue down the hallway. “Don’t you ever get tired of giving nicknames to everyone?”

“No, not really. Why are you asking, Bones?” Leonard hears the teasing in Jim’s voice, and tries not to flinch at the name, settling on a scowl instead.

On their last case together - a missing woman who’d turned up all torn and bloody but alive - Leonard had had a hard time to find out what happened. The woman had lost her mind, babbling away without making any sense. Leonard hadn’t turned up any leads with good old detective work, so he’d ended up working more magic than was good for him.

Magic is fueled on emotions, and the more magic a wizard does, the more emotionally drained it leaves him. Leonard had been frustrated, sitting in his apartment, running on his last resources after two weeks of nothing. He’d smashed a human skull against a wall that last night, making bone splinters fly through his apartment.

Of course, Jim had been right next to him when this happened, sleep-deprived from staying at Leonard’s side the whole time, and had laughed his ass off. The nickname - really witty and original – was created. He’d tried to talk Jim out of it, but Jim had thought it was perfect for him.

Stupid kid.

+~+

Jim doesn’t like the morgue. Most people think that police officers get used to it after awhile. But how is he supposed to get used to it, with the too bright light reflecting off the tiles, the strong smell of antiseptics everywhere? Naked victims, cut open and it always felt like they were staring at him, despite their closed eyes. As if it’s his fault, as if he were better in his job, he could have prevented what happened to them.

Especially in a case like this, where the young man in front of him is the latest in a series of murders that have kept him guessing, forcing him to turn to the only expert in the paranormal he knows.

He inherited Bones from Captain Pike, when the man retired.

The first time Pike had told him about Bones Jim had been sure the man was joking. A wizard helping the police solving crimes? That sounded like a book or a movie, not like real life. But that hadn’t kept him from asking for Bones’ help when he got stuck on an unusual case. People acting weirdly, speaking in a language no one could place, bending their limbs in ways that looked painful. One woman had even managed to crawl along a wall with her hands and feet alone.

Jim had called Bones, sure, but he hadn’t expected to have his beliefs about magic so thoroughly tested.

According to Bones, the people had been possessed by an evil spirit.

Thinking of the movie, Jim had wanted to come with Bones to watch a real exorcism, but Bones had told him to back off. He had, against his better judgment. Bones came to his office after only a few hours, sweating profusely, his voice a rasp. He said it was over, and when Jim went to check, the victims acted completely normal again, with no recollection of what had happened.

Over time Jim had just stopped wondering, stopped asking questions, just let Bones do his work. Not that it was always a help.

Like in this case, where the first victim had turned up two weeks ago. A neighbor had reported a rotten smell coming from the apartment next door. The victim had been a young man in his early thirties. He’d been lying on his bed, naked, his dark hair tousled, eyes closed. He’d looked so peaceful, like he was asleep - except for the large cut on his torso from his left collarbone to his right hipbone. The cut had been deep enough to show his ribcage and the organs inside it, like someone had tried to make a model for anatomy lessons. His heart had been missing, replaced by something the scared-looking crime scene investigator had handed Jim in a plastic bag.

A shockingly green, plastic, wind-up frog.

There were no traces of forced entry or a fight, no weapon. The bed and the carpet underneath it should have been soaked with blood, but not a single drop had spilled from the victim’s cut. So it became Jim’s case, and he called in Bones.

Bones had stared at the corpse for a long time, murmuring to himself. Then Jim had shown him the plastic frog, and, after a second or two, Bones had started shaking violently. Jim had dragged him out of the victim’s apartment, pausing once they reached the street to reach into his shirt’s breast pocket. He’d extracted a cigarette from a very battered looking package.

Bones had looked down the street, taking deep, steadying breaths. Then he’d scrunched up his nose, and turned to Jim, scowling at the cigarette in his hands. “Those are going to kill you, kid.”

Jim had taken another drag, then grimaced at Bones as the smoke filled his lungs. “What won’t?”

Bones had looked like he was going to say something, but dropped it. He’d looked past Jim instead, chewing on his bottom lip.

Jim had been about to ask Bones about the frog and the reason for Bones’ reaction when a young cop had asked Jim to come in again and look at a partial footprint the CSI found in the apartment.

He had tried to bring up the frogs again, every time he found himself alone with Bones. But the other man always found an excuse not to answer.

Jim had been close to lock Bones up somewhere to get him to talk when the second victim had turned up a week later. Same setting, similar looking guy, except this time, the cut was from the right collarbone to the left hipbone.

There had been another frog in his chest, its green plastic looking too cheerfully bright for its setting. He had tried to coax information out of Bones again, but the man had only shaken his head, lips tightly pressed together, hands shoved into his jeans pockets.

Jim had almost threatened him with arrest, but had thought better of it.

If there was something Bones knew about the frogs, he would talk - Jim was sure about that. He had started finally trusting the man, and he wasn’t going to stop because of this, as frustrating as Bones’ stubborn silence was.

Jim only hopes that Bones isn’t trying to protect him from some ridiculous evil magical force or something equally stupid. He’s already waved off Bones’ tries to talk him into setting up a ward around his apartment, or hanging up garlic in his kitchen to drive off vampires.

Jim can’t get his head around all the “supernatural” stuff he hears from Bones. Hell, he still waits for a prove that Bones really is a wizard. In the last six months that he’s been working for SI, all Jim got from Bones were weird stories, strange reports and a lot of magical terms Jim had never heard before.  
None of this he believes in, the demons, vampires, ghouls or trolls. Not even after seeing things like tonight.

A third young man had turned up after a shaken friend had called the police. The victim is cut open exactly like the first one, as if someone is leaving a message and Jim just needs to take a step back to see what it is.

Jim scowls down at the wound, as if he could solve the mystery by staring hard enough at it. Then he turns to the coroner, a young Asian man hunched over the corpse, muttering under his breath.

“What can you tell me, Sulu?” Jim asks crisply.

Sulu straightens and looks up as if he’d forgotten he isn’t alone.

“White male in his late twenties or early thirties. No signs of a struggle, no defensive wounds, no indication of sexual intercourse. No indication as of what kind of weapon was used, but whatever it was left a clean cut, indicating the culprit knows what he or she is doing. His heart was removed post-mortem and there was this.” He holds up a plastic bag with another frog in it.

Jim chews on his bottom lip and feels a rush of frustration at the sight of the silly toy. He turns to the man next to him. “Any ideas on this, wizard?”

He can’t quite keep the sarcasm out of his voice. He still doesn’t know what to make of Bones, with his long leather coat, an AC/DC shirt and cowboy boots, and, of course, a grouchy demeanor.

He’s still waiting for Bones to shout “Gotcha!” at him any minute and admit he’s been pulling Jim’s leg. That “wizard” means he goes to children’s birthday parties with a top hat on his head and a rabbit hidden under his cloak.

He can’t deny Bones is a good private investigator, though, and Jim likes to hear his professional opinion.

Hell, he likes the guy, period. He is fun, in his grumpy way. He is always up for a beer and a pizza, likes the same movies as Jim, and is a helpless Star Trek geek. Although how he manages to watch an episode of the show when he doesn’t own a TV is a mystery to Jim.

It helps a lot that Bones looks hot, even with heavy shadows under his eyes.

“No, Jim. I have no fucking clue what’s going on,” Bones answers in a near-growl, fingers raking through his hair. The ends stick up, a bed-head appearance that shouldn’t look as good on him as it does. Jim sighs at both Bones’ answer and his own scattered thoughts, and runs a hand over the stubble on his chin.

“Never say I’m not wasting the city’s money. Or your time.” Jim looks at the ceiling. Of course they didn’t find anything new or revealing tonight. That would have been too easy. He could as well get home and try to get some sleep. He glances at Bones. “Are you here with that piece of junk of yours, or do you need me to give you a ride?”

“A ride would be great,” Bones replies. Jim hasn’t expected anything else. The old Volkswagen Bug that Bones drives is at Mike’s garage almost every week. When Jim had suggested once that Bones should look for another mechanic, he’d only shaken his head, insisting that this Mike guy was the only one who could keep that old rusty thing going.

Jim still hasn’t seen a day when Bones isn’t relying on public transport, but he’s rather glad the wizard is in need of a ride today. Jim wants to talk to him in private.

“OK, Sulu, we’re outta here. Call me if you find something else.”

Sulu, already back at squinting at the corpse, waves absently as they leave the room. When Jim opens the doors the cold night fog hits him in the face, and he hunches his shoulders automatically.

His car smells of pine air freshener, and stale cigarette smoke, and he breathes deeply, the scent making him feel better. He reaches for the keys to start the car, but hesitates, thinking. Bones is already staring out of the window with an absent look on his face.

“You’re sure you don’t want to tell me something?” Jim asks, thinking of the look on Bones’ face when Sulu held up the frog.

Bones jumps at the questions then looks down at his feet.

“The frogs, maybe?” Jim presses on.

Bones still doesn’t say anything, and Jim lets out a frustrated noise. “Look, I don’t _want_ to threaten you, but if there’s something you aren’t telling me, I can get you arrested for holding back evidence.”

Bones leans back in the chair, drooping against the head rest, and Jim doesn’t bother glancing over to see the eye roll. “I’m not holding back anything, Jim.”

Jim quirks an eyebrow at that. “Are you sure about that?”

Bones heaves a sigh. “Look, it’s just… a few weeks ago, there was a frog waiting for me at my apartment. No message, no spell on it, nothing to let me know what it means, why someone would send it to me. And when another one turned up at the crime scene, I knew that there had to be something about them, something I should know. It’s something about me. But I can’t remember what it is!” Bones’ rant ends in an almost shout, as he hits his thigh with his fist.

Jim purses his lips. “Well, let me know if you do, will you?”

Bones turns to him, looks at him as intensely, although he avoids meeting Jim’s eye, and nods. After a moment he scrunches up his nose, a scowl slowly forming.

“What is it now?” Jim asks. Bones always finds something to complain about when he rides in Jim’s car. Sometimes he grouches about the mess in the car or that the seats aren’t comfortable enough. One day Bones insisted that something was squeaking right under his left foot. And he hates the radio stations Jim picks, every single one of them.

“Your car smells like an ashtray,” is Bones’ complaint now.

“Well, at least it’s fast. You could still wait for a taxi, if you’d rather…” Jim trails off, waving a hand.

Bones’ scowl deepens some more, but he doesn’t say anything as he turns around to grab for the seatbelt. Jim hides a smile and reaches past him for the glove box, rummaging until he finds the Mars bar he’d stashed there a few days ago.

Holding it between his teeth, Jim starts the car. As he pulls out of the parking lot, he peels away the wrapper with one hand and takes a bite as soon as the chocolate is exposed.

Bones looks at him again. “Is this the first thing you’re eating today?”

“Could you please stop acting like my mother?” Jim asks, squinting at the road. “Actually, it’s the second thing today. And the first Mars bar was great, too.”

“That’s unhealthy. You should really eat something more nutritious, like a salad, or…”

Jim chuckles. “What, while I’m driving? I’m good, but eating something that requires a fork while staying on to the road would be challenging, even for me.”

“I didn’t mean now, jerk. But I hear the cafeteria at the police department is rather decent.”

Jim sticks his tongue out at the other man and bites off another chunk of chocolate.

“At least try not to get us killed.” Bones growls, hand tightening on the door handle.

At that, Jim smirks and starts jerking the steering wheel left and right. The car swerves on the empty road, tires making a waving line across the damp street.

“Jim! Stop that, or I may throw up on you!” Bones snaps.

Jim laughs, straightens the car, and grins at Bones. “Man, you are one big ball of fear.”

“Do me a favor and look at the road,” Bones replies half-heartedly.

Jim does, refraining steering the car too roughly. He likes to tease Bones, but doesn’t want Bones to jump him. At least not while he’s driving.

Bones seems unsettled enough, going by the slight sheen of sweat on his forehead. Wondering what the man would look like after a ride on a rollercoaster, Jim drives on in silence until they reach Bones’ street.

“Look, there’s your car,“ Jim says as he pulls over. “Wasn’t that hood red the last time I saw it?”

“That was before something big with claws attacked it,” Bones answers dryly.

Jim laughs at that, not quite sure whether to believe it or not. He turns to look at the other man. “You look like shit.”

”Thank you,” Bones replies. “You don’t look better. When’s the last time you slept for more than three hours?”

“I don’t know – high school?” Jim answers, pulling up a weary smile.

Bones snorts, his hand on the handle.

“So, why don’t we both try to get some sleep, and meet at my place tomorrow night, at, say, eight?” Jim rushes to say before Bones can leave the car.

Bones quirks an eyebrow at him. “You know, it sounds very professional when you say it like that.”

”I just want to discuss this case in peace, not at the office, where anyone could eavesdrop. Internal Affairs is hanging around me again, like they have nothing better to do - and talking about mysterious deaths that I have no fucking clue about won’t help. Besides, the game’s on tomorrow. Or I’m trying to seduce you, whatever you prefer,” Jim adds, wriggling his eyebrows.

Bones smiles softly at that. “You’d have to buy me dinner first.”

“Bones, I’d buy you a whole restaurant.” He puts a hand on Bones’ shoulder. Flirting with Bones is way too much fun.

Bones averts his gaze before their eyes lock.

Jim sighs at that. Bones told him on their first meeting that looking into his eyes could lead to what magicians supposedly call a soulgaze. Bones had said something about looking into each others souls, and hadn’t wanted to give more details on it.

Jim had said he didn’t mind, but Bones didn’t want him to see his soul, thought it was too much for him.

Bones’ mumbo-jumbo explanation had sounded like the biggest crap Jim had ever come across, but he hadn’t pressed it – much. He _had_ tried to sneak up on Bones, maybe catch him by surprise and see if that stuff was true.

It made Bones mad, which made Jim only try harder.

Though not tonight – they were both tired, and Jim wasn’t sure if Bones wouldn’t one day just kill him if he annoyed the wizard too much.

So he just squeezes Bones’ shoulder. “Bye, old man.”

Bones grumbles something under his breath, and closes the car door a bit harder than necessary.

+~+

Leonard hears the wheels of Jim’s car screech as he rounds the corner, and makes a point not to look back.   
Stupid kid was going to get himself killed one of these days.

He ascends the steps to his apartment, keys jiggling in his hands. As he opens the door, a sudden heavy weight against his legs makes him stumble backwards. Cursing under his breath as he recovers his balance, Leonard feels relieved that he’s alone. He can just imagine Jim laughing his ass off as Leonard almost falls on his butt because of a damn cat.

In his defense, Spock is the biggest cat he’s ever seen, probably half cougar and weighs nearly as much as one.

He had seen him in a dumpster as a kitten, and hadn’t been able to walk past him. A month later and Leonard was feeling as if he was only a guest in his own home.

Cats – you just had to love them.

Leonard steps aside for Spock to walk past him on his way outside and almost envies the cat his more active social life as he walks into his dark apartment. The candles have burned down, and he tries not to step into his couch as he searches for his lighter.

Leonard doesn’t rely on electricity. He and technology don’t get along very well, an effect of the magical energy radiating from him, and he doesn’t like to take chances. The light bulb hanging from the ceiling is long burnt out - it’d started flickering the day he put it into the socket.

He walks through the hallway, dropping his leather coat on the kitchen counter. He makes it to his fridge - just a box with a huge ice cube inside to keep things cold - and retrieves a coke. As he drinks, his gaze falls into his dark living room, and he notices again how empty it looks without lamps, a computer, or a TV.

The first time Jim had entered the apartment, he had just shook his head and mumbled something that sounded very much like “Neanderthal”. It made Leonard chuckle. He didn’t miss the things others thought necessary. He was happy with his older technology, thank you very much. Well, maybe apart from central heating.

When he moved to California, he had imagined sunshine, never-ending summers, hot days on which an apartment that faces to the north would come in handy.

When June came, he realized he should have researched the weather of Northern California better. There had been a few days on which he thought he might die of the cold during San Francisco’s fog-blanketed “summer”. He had spent a lot of his first case’s money on rugs, heavy tapestries and a bunch of blankets he’d hid under while reading. He slips under one on the couch now, and reaches for his latest paperback.

He gives up his attempt at relaxing after he realizes he’s read the same sentence at least ten times. This wasn’t working.

He slips further down on the couch, closes his eyes. But he can’t stop thinking, can’t stop seeing the corpse of the young man lying on a cold, metal table in fluorescent light.

Can’t stop trying to figure out the meaning of the damn frogs.

He finally gives in. Leonard doesn’t like to use magic as a crutch, but he needs sleep. He hasn’t slept for what feels like ages, the case intruding into his nights, keeping him awake. He’s found himself pacing his lab and living room, going over the few pieces of evidence, trying to figure out what exactly he was missing. He’s done that so often that he’s close to seeing things now. Sighing, he grabs his heavy flannel robe from its hook, and moves one of the bigger tapestries aside, revealing another door.

Shelves line the walls of the makeshift lab; tables are crammed into every corner and nook. He walks past the big oak table in the center of the room, hand gliding along the edge as he tries to find his way through the darkness. The table is covered with bottles and containers, notebooks and pens carefully laid out. He reaches one of his shelves, groping for a candle and lights it. He carefully walks around the room, lightning candle after candle. In the flickering light, he can see the boxes and Tupperware filled with potion ingredients that are neatly stacked and labeled all around the room.

A former girlfriend had called him neurotic once. Maybe she had been right, but he didn’t like to work in chaos.

He tries not to stumble over the huge brass circle embedded in the floor in one corner of the room. Ancient symbols, tarnished with age, are carved into it. He uses the circle for his spell work or trapping the occasional demon when the situation calls for it.

“Well, look who’s home late? Don’t tell me you’ve finally gotten laid?” Leonard flinches as the voice cuts through the silence of the lab.

A stuffed animal in the form of a bat, with a skeleton printed on the front, sits on one of the shelves on across the room. The same ex had given it to him – she’d deemed it cute and “fitting” for him. Leonard had put it in one of his boxes when she’d left, and had forgotten about it. Now it’s animated and even further from cute. It reminds him of Chucky, eyes gleaming with an orange light, features grinning just like the murderous puppet.

When Leonard first came across Bob, an airborne spirit a few thousand years old, he’d resided in a human skull. His first master had bound Bob to it, making sure the ghost couldn’t leave without permission. And if you had asked Bob, a skull was the only thing the spirit belonged in.

It had been Bob’s skull that Leonard had smashed last spring.

It had been hard to keep him from slipping out of the door immediately. Leonard had started with threats, moved on to bribes and eventually sunk to pleas until he found something appropriate to bind Bob to. Thinking that the plush animal he had stumbled over was a great makeshift solution was something he blamed on his sleep deprivation.  
Bob hadn’t been willing to speak with him for three weeks, and had only stopped sulking when Leonard had pulled out a mirror and sworn up and down that the spirit still looked rather intimidating.

While intimidating might be a bit of stretch, creepy is not, which is why Leonard does not look at the spirit as he growls “Not now, Bob.”

“Are we all grumpy again? Sounds like it wasn’t nice. Or didn’t you get it up? You can tell your old friend.”

“If you really want to know, I was in the morgue with Kirk. Another dead man, cut open like the last two I told you about.” Leonard surprises himself at how hollow he sounds.

“What, another one? Someone is having fum,” Bob says with a leer.

“Bob,” Bones says in warning - but he can’t really blame the spirit. Beings from the Nevernever, the realm of ghosts and faeries, didn’t have the same moral standards as mortals. Or, to be more precise, they had none. But, sometimes, he just couldn’t deal with it.

“Don’t jump down my throat! I told you I would be a better help if you let me out.”

“Sure. Remember last time I did that, and you started an orgy on college campus last year? No way I’m letting you out again any time soon!” Leonard snaps at the plush animal.

Bob scowls at him, but Leonard ignores him.

Bob is an old spirit, and a real help when it comes to complicated spells or ancient information that Leonard couldn’t find elsewhere. He’s been involved in many cases, ones Leonard wouldn’t have been able to solve on his own, and only asks for one thing in return.

Because Bob is also a sex-maniac, and for him, the perfect agreement would be for Leonard to let him out occasionally, so he could possess a young person and have a go at an orgy or two.  
Leonard pays him instead in porn, cheesy romance novels and Playboy, and ignores the frequent requests for “human time”. He is responsible for the ghost, and doesn’t want to have to tell police officers or other authorities just why, exactly, a young man broke his leg while trying to sleep with five people at once. It has happened before, and Leonard had been embarrassed enough by it. It certainly wasn’t going to happen again on his watch.

He also turns a deaf ear on the inquiries after his personal sex life.

At least the spirit keeps him company, and he’s got someone to talk to while he works in his lab. Before he found Bob, he had kept talking to himself.

Although, on days like today, he wouldn’t mind that.

He puts down a candle on the table and turns to one of his shelves. ”Whatever, just need to brew something, and then I’m off to bed. Wanna help, or are you here just to insult me?” He wouldn’t be surprised if Bob declines, as he growls the words at him.

“Depends on what you want to do,” Bob says nonchalantly.

“I need to make a sleeping potion.”

“Don’t tell me I still have to walk you through one of those. How many times have we made one? Thirty, forty? Not that much good came from it, the way you charge people for next to nothing for them.” Bob never understood the value of gratefulness, since you couldn’t buy porn from it.

“It’s for me, and I just wanted you to look over my shoulder in case I’m forgetting something again,” Leonard answers, smothering back a yawn.

Bob manages to shrug his small shoulders, a gesture that would have looked ridiculous, if it wasn’t so scary. “You still remember the ingredients, right?”

Leonard nods, already retrieving things from boxes and drawers.

A potion – any potion - needs eight ingredients: one for each sense, plus a base liquid to blend them together. Milk, in this case. He sets up the stove, heating the milk and letting it simmer, as he gets the other ingredients.

Bourbon for taste, the cry of a lark for sound, lavender for smell. He pulls out a pair of scissors to cut off a bit from a spare blanket for touch, rips a page from a storybook for mind. A jar at the back of his lab has starlight for sight, and he finds a lullaby for the spirit on the shelf next to it.

“Well, doesn’t look that bad to me. Another half an hour, and you’re done,” Bob chirps at him.

Leonard doesn’t answer, glad that his work has distracted Bob enough that he’s not talking about sex, or dead people, or worse, sex with dead people.

Leonard cleans the lab as he waits for the potion to settle. When Bob tells him its time, he pours the finished potion into a bottle, labels it “Sleep Potion” in capital letters. Then he takes a huge gulp, doing his best to ignore the taste. Setting the bottle on the table, Leonard yawns and shuffles through the door, his feet barely lifting off from the floor.

That stuff kicks in fast.

“You could at least say thank you!” Bob yells after him.

Leonard waves vaguely at the spirit, yawning out a garbled “Bite me, too”, then drags himself to the bedroom. He slumps down on top of the covers, shuts his eyes, and is gone.

+~+

The noise of someone knocking on his front door wakes him up again.

A look at the clock tells him he’s only gotten four hours, and he curses slightly. What a waste of potion ingredients. He dresses haphazardly in a black t-shirt and sweat pants, then drags himself towards the source of the noise.

“What the fuck do you…” he starts rambling.

“Morning, Mister McCoy.”

Leonard blinks. “Chekov. What the…”

But before he can finish the curse, he remembers he had told the kid to come over. He just hadn’t expected him this early, dammit. “Shit, Chekov, what are you doing here in the middle of the night?” The sun shining through the windows betrays Leonard’s words, but he doesn’t care.  
He’s not a morning person.

Chekov shrinks under his glare, looks at his feet, and Leonard sighs. “Sorry, kid. Come in.”

He’d met Chekov a few months back. The kid had entered his office, nervous as all hell, and stammered all through his story. He was seventeen, some kind of wunderkind when it came to science, and already close to graduating college. Something to do with astrophysics.

Chekov was less of a wunderkind when it came to magic, but he’d managed to set fire to the shoes of his brother when angry, nonetheless. He’d apparently panicked a bit then, and set off to find Leonard.

It wasn’t uncommon for people to knock on his door, asking for help or guidance. Leonard had started leaving out flyers a few years back at the places young wizards kept going to. Esoteric bookstores, gothic clubs, that kind of thing.

He hadn’t quite expected that most of them would think his mentoring was free. But Leonard had looked into Chekov’s green eyes briefly, had taken in his hunched shoulders and trembling lips, and hadn’t had the heart to hand him another, more specific flyer listing prices and send him home again. So now he had an apprentice, something he hadn’t wanted just yet.

But the relieved smile that had lit up the kid’s face had been worth it.

Ever since then Leonard has been trying to teach Chekov some basic tricks, mostly for keeping his temper in check and channeling his magic when needed.

Magic is a very individual thing, always different for each user. Some were better with earth magic, and others, like Leonard, had a talent for fire magic. Leonard had wished on many occasions that this could be somehow influenced, but as his mentor always said, things like that were like green eyes. Nothing you could do anything about. You couldn’t control who were naturals, people who could do the incantations without much effort or much training. Or who were the ones who needed a bit training to gain finesse, like Leonard had when he had still been with Mark.

And who would turn out to be a hopeless case, someone who let their nervousness win, who didn’t have the confidence to put a spell on a fly. Leonard had found himself one of those, of course.

Chekov has his good days, and his bad days. On his bad days, he doesn’t get anything right, even forgets the easiest things.

Today seems to be one of the kid’s bad days.

“I told you to concentrate, dammit!” Leonard pinches the bridge of his nose and silently counts to hundred. He makes it to twelve.

“Sorry, I just, I… can- can I try again?”

Leonard waves his hand impatiently, and breaks the circle he had drawn for Chekov on his living room floor on the space where he removed a few of his rugs.

“This time focus your will on closing the circle. That should be easy enough, even for you,” he says through gritted teeth as he hands Chekov the lump of chalk he’d used to make the first three circles Chekov had failed to maintain.

Chekov nods enthusiastically, and bends down to draw a circle. Leonard winces at how uneven it is, but doesn’t say a word. The kid needs to get the technique right first, then they can work on how to do it in a stylish way. If he doesn’t kill the kid first.

Leonard really doesn’t have the patience for this.

Chekov straightens up again, smoothing down his shirt as he stands and scrunching his nose in concentration. Leonard feels the surge of power as the kid wills energy to the circle. A small smile tugs at his lips. At least the kid got that one right.

Leonard looks around. Most of his pillows are already strewn over the living room floor next to Chekov’s circle. He always makes sure to grab something soft to throw at the kid, or he would’ve given him a few severe head injuries in the last four months.

Finding one more cushion at hand, he turns to Chekov again. As he squishes his missile he tries to decide how to throw it. Maybe he’ll even be able to take Chekov by surprise. Spock, lying on a shelf over the fireplace, lifts his head, and Leonard gets the feeling he is being watched.

Creepy cat.

The ringing telephone makes both of the wizards jump.

"Wait a minute, okay?” Leonard turns towards the phone, then thinks better of it and quickly throws the pillow at Chekov before bending down again. He hears a curse as the pillow hits the kid’s head, and rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, McCoy here,” he says grumpily into the receiver.

“You’re always so cheerful on the phone?” Leonard can picture Jim’s grin only too well.

“Only when annoying police officers call me.”

“Oh, but how did you know? You’re precognitive now too?” Jim responds with laughter in his voice.

”Only you would call me at this time of the day, brat.” Leonard can’t help smiling at the phone.

”Oh, come on, it’s already eleven. It’s not _that_ early!”

“I told you I’m not really awake any time before noon.” The first few times, Leonard had even yelled it into Jim’s face when the younger man turned up at his door early in the morning, coffee in his hands and sheepish look on his face.

He’s _definitely_ not a morning person.

“Yeah, I know.” Jim sobers as he says “Look I found something… I really think you should see this. Could you get here by six tonight?”

“Of course. Must be really something,” Bones says with a frown.

"Yeah, you could say so. You’ll have to see it yourself.”

“Shooting for enigmatic, hmmm? You know, I _think_ this is a secure line,” Leonard says, voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Aw, you know there isn’t such thing as a secure line nowadays,” Jim chuckles. “See you later?”

“Sure.”

When he hangs up Leonard realizes he’s hungry, and still has half a day to fill before he meets Jim. He eyes Chekov, whose red face turns even brighter when he looks at Leonard, pillow in one hand.

“OK, kid, how about we take a break - you sit down and practice concentrating, while I grab something to eat?” Leonard needs the break more than the kid does. He’s not going to tell him that, though.

”That’s fine, Mister McCoy.”

“Super. Just don’t set fire to the place. I’m rather attached to it. And if you leave before I’m back, make sure the wards are back up again. You remember how to do that, right?” Leonard asks mostly to reassure himself.

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“I told you not to call me sir. I’m a wizard, not an army officer.” Bones lets out a huff.

“Sorry, Mister McCoy.”

Leonard sighs. He’d initially tried to get the kid to call him by his first name, but Chekov’s only response was to turn beet red and stammer so much that Leonard had had to take mercy on him.

“OK, see you around,” Leonard says as he shrugs into his leather coat.

“Mister McCoy?”

“Yeah?”

Chekov plucks at the pillow in his hands. “Would you mind if I stayed here tonight? I wanted to practice some more, but my brothers are at home, and I can’t concentrate there.”

Leonard shrugs his shoulders. “Sure, why not. Just make sure to let Spock out at some point, or he’ll get grumpy.”

Grabbing his car keys, he heads for his car, which his mechanic had repaired in next to no time while Leonard was at the morgue. Jim could say about Mike’s abilities as a mechanic what he wanted, but the guy was fast. And cheap.

The old battered bug had been blue when Leonard had first acquired it, but time and several encounters with evil spirits and monsters had changed that rather quickly. It’s currently sporting one green door and one white door, a yellow hood, a black trunk and a blue roof.

Leonard still calls it the Blue Beetle, though, and he won’t get rid of it until it’s rusting from under his ass. He turns the keys and drives to the one place a wizard can get a decent meal in this city.

“The Planet Orion” sounds like a club, a place where young people come to dance and drink while on the look for a quick fuck. But it’s just a pub - in Leonard’s humble opinion one of the best in the whole city.

It’s also a place where people dealing with magic can meet up without fear of being bothered. The owner has taken every precaution to ward off any magical energy or misaimed spell. Seven stools stand at the bar. The seven tables are set out to form a protective symbol. Seven fans rotate on the ceiling, and seven mirrors hang on the wall. Leonard had almost immediately felt at home.

Almost. If it weren’t for the color scheme...

The first time Leonard had walked into the pub, he had thought he might go blind, because everything, from the floor to the ceiling, was green. Different shades of green, sure, light springy colors that clashed with darker hues and made his eyes water. And if that wasn’t enough, the stuff that wasn’t green – napkins, salt and pepper shakers, light switches – were a bright purple.

He had been close to walking back out the door when a young woman with curly hair and a warm smile on her lips, had shown up and had dragged him to the bar. Without asking him what he wanted, she’d poured a glass of bourbon, planted her elbows on top of the bar, and talked. And talked. And then talked some more. Eventually he even learned her name – Gaila.

He’d almost felt dizzy, but it was, in a way, comforting. As the evening continued he felt himself smiling, relaxing, and finally thinking that he never wanted to leave again.

He enters the pub, blinking as the sunlight makes the green hurt even more, and hears her before he spots her.

“Hi, Leonard, love. Breakfast it is.” He looks up to see her behind the bar, smiling at him.

Leonard flashes her an answering smile and sits down at the bar. It’s the one place he can actually open his eyes safely, across from soothingly-colored bottles and the cash register, which is, thankfully, brown.

He watches Gaila bustle around behind the bar, twirling a wooden spoon while she chatters away at him.

“And then, boom, my caldron, the expensive one, the one I flew all the way to England for, just exploded all around me. I was covered head to toe with a half finished wake-up potion. You know how long they take to make, don’t you? And then I had to start all over again, but I’d run out of coffee beans,” she says as she slides his eggs onto a plate, and sets it down in front of Leonard. He watches her curly hair swing around her head absently as she talks, before catching her “…and I think someone wants to talk to you.”

Leonard turns around at that, and heaves a sigh.

A young woman, blond, curvy, long legs, walks towards him, her hips swinging with every step. She’s got on that small smile that’s always playing at the corners of her mouth.

Jocelyn Darnell. His ex girlfriend. She comes to a stop next to him, warm smile widening, and one hand clasps his shoulder.

“Leonard,” she says as she looks into his eyes. She can do that. They had first met each other’s eyes - soulgazed - a long, long time ago. Hell, they had practically been married; it would have been hard to avert their eyes all the time.

She had blinked at him when it was over, pale and shocked, then thrown up all over his boots. After soulgazes with five other people, he was used to that reaction afterwards. Well, the pale and shocked expressions, at least, not so much the throwing up.

He doesn’t know what people see when they look into his soul, and hasn’t bothered to find out. It can’t be fun, whatever it is. So he avoids soulgazes as much as he can; he doesn’t forget what he sees when he gazes into the souls of other people and he doesn’t want to scare them away with what’s in his.

He had tried to explain it all to Jim, but the kid still occasionally tries to trick him into one, not realizing what he’s asking for. Maybe Leonard should introduce him to Jocelyn one day.

Leonard had met her when he was still young, and she’d just finished college. Jocelyn had been on the journalism track from day one: worked for the college paper, wrote stories about the football team and dreamed of going to foreign places. She’d just found a job at a local newspaper and was trying to find the one story that would make her name known.

Leonard had already been working as an investigator, and she’d asked to come with him one night. “What could happen, Leonard?” she’d asked, batting her eyelashes.

Something bad, that’s what could and did happen that night. She’d lost an eye.

Leonard had done all he could, the doctors had done their best, but it’d been too late. She had taken it well, joking about how much she looked like a piratess in business attire, and had gotten an impressive stock of eye patches, each a different color. Today she was wearing a pink one, with a cat stitched on it in the middle. Leonard sometimes wondered whether they were custom made or if someone specialized in eye patches for children and very strange women.

They broke up shortly after the incident. Well, Leonard did.

Jocelyn had been great, hadn’t blamed Leonard, but he couldn’t stay with her, couldn’t endanger her every time he crossed paths with a bad guy. She has someone else now, Chad or Chuck, or maybe Jack, and Leonard has stayed as close to her as he can handle.

It still always hurt to see her. And she’s still always worried about him - and always keen to get a story out of him. The paper she works for, the “Mystic”, covers everything from the odd “Is Elvis secretly running a diner in El Paso?” type story to the weird stuff going on in San Francisco. No serious paper would report on vampire romps, a troll hunt, or a werewolf attack, but in the “Mystic” stuff like that sells like hot mead at a renaissance festival.

“Anything you’d like to tell me?” she asks Leonard now, and her smile cuts right through him.

“Nothing you could work with, I’m afraid.”

“I heard there are some really strange murders going on?”she asks, pressing on.

“How do you know?”

She shrugs, her smile widening. “I have my sources.”

He doesn’t think he wants to know, so he doesn’t ask who the “sources” are, choosing to only return a smile at her. “Then you’d better ask your sources about them.”

“Leonard. Not even off the record?” she says, almost pouting.

“There is no off the record with you, even if I knew what was going on.”

“Fine, be like that. Maybe I should ask the young police captain you’re working with.” Jocelyn’s tone is teasing as she tries to get him to talk.

“I don’t think Jim would tell you any more than I have.”

“Jim is it, huh?” A perfectly plucked eyebrow arches over the eye patch.

” Joce.” Leonard hates nothing more than people sticking their noses into his love life, how barely existent it might be.

“What? I can’t blame you. From what I’ve seen he’s a good looking guy, with those blue eyes and that smile…” She trails off, smiling slightly.

“It’s not like I’ve looked.” Or that he would admit it out loud.

“Leonard, you’re still a bad liar,” Jocelyn laughs.

Leonard only scowls at that.

“How long has it been since you dated someone?” Her fingers tug at the lapel of his leather coat as she looks at him.

“You know it’s not that easy.”

“You should. You look lonely.” Jocelyn worried expression makes Leonard’s stomach churn.

“Yeah, he should. Besides, that Jim has the hots for you.” Gaila says, the quip sailing up from behind the bar.

Leonard turns to shoot Gaila a glare, but she’s already ducking back behind the bar, a grin spreading over her features.

“If you two are done analyzing my sex life…”

“Just making sure you have one, love.” Jocelyn says, squeezing his arm.

“Yeah, whatever.”

“Oh, Len.” Jocelyn sighs. A moment and it’s all business, her smile back.

“If there’s anything, anything at all, you call me. I want an exclusive story.”

Bones lets out a breath. “Sure.”

He watches Jocelyn as she leaves the pub, his breakfast forgotten.

Perfect way to start the day.

+~+

For Jim, investigating is like putting together a puzzle you’ve lost the top for. You go by instinct and the shape of each puzzle piece to slowly develop the big picture. With cases like this one, he feels like he’s staring at the back of the pieces, only seeing grey cardboard, fumbling at the edges to get to the center of the mystery.

Going back to the latest crime scene doesn’t turn up anything.

He asks the neighbors again, but they still haven’t seen anything or anyone, don’t remember anything, don’t know much about the inhabitant of 29b. Like the other two victims, the guy, Ben, had kept pretty much to himself, and was barely at home. A med student always surrounded by books and reading when you met him in the laundry room.

Standing in front of the apartment door, Jim rakes his hand through his hair and lets out a breath. The apartment still looks like it had when the police arrived, drawers overturned, papers lying everywhere.

There’s a memory board hung on the wall, covered with postcards from nearly everywhere. The guy had done something called postcrossing, sending and receiving postcards from random strangers. Jim had wondered what the Internet would come up with next when he’d looked into it earlier.

There’s nothing that connects the victims, Jim’s already checked. No book clubs, no movie theater or coffeehouse they all went to regularly, not even the same pizza delivery service.

They all lived a life Jim knows only too well, never really at home, and when they were they’d order in and eat in front of the TV. Not many friends but DVD racks bursting with more movies than you could buy at the corner store.

He walks slowly through the apartment, picking up personal belongings randomly.

One picture strikes him, and he picks it up, looking at a slightly younger version of Ben smiling at the camera, his bangs falling into his face, his broad chest glinting with water from the sea. Jim can’t help but notice that the guy looks a lot like Bones, and grins slightly at that thought as he sets the photo down again.

He’s rummaging through the drawers of Ben’s nightstand when the thought that’s been nagging at him solidifies.

They had all looked a lot like Bones, hadn’t they?

Jim remembers how Bones said all this, the frogs, the victims, could be something about him. Maybe the other man was right, maybe someone tried to get to the wizard through all of this.

Heaving a frustrated sigh, Jim decides to talk about this with Bones when they meet tonight. He wants details, and he wants them now. Even if they’re only small and vague details. Jim can work wonders with vague information.

He gives up after turning everything upside down yet again. Back on the street he pauses for a smoke, squints up at the sun while he tries to free his mind. It’s not working, so he goes back home to nap for a few hours. Of course, once he’s there he can’t sleep, so he opens the case file again, stares down at the pictures of the victims, tilting his head like a new angle will help.

What is it he’s missing?

He closes his eyes, rubs his hands over them, and suddenly it feels like something has just clicked in his head. He looks at the pictures again, and there it is, as clear as daylight, so obvious that he wonders why he hasn’t seen it yet. He picks up the phone.

He calls Bones, tells him that found something, tells him to meet him earlier. Bones sounds annoyed as hell, and Jim would really love to know what’s going on at the other side of the line.

When he hangs up later, grinning like a fool, he decides to hunt up some food and maybe some booze for later. He steps out of his apartment, feels the warm sun shining on his face, and his grin widens as he walks to his car.

He doesn’t hear them approach, doesn’t see the blow coming, but he certainly feels the heavy object connecting with his head. There’s pain, stars in his eyes, and then nothing.

+~+

At around six, Leonard stands on Jim’s doorstep and tries to not be nervous.

This is silly. He’s here to discuss work - creepy murders, not something really heart warming - but here Leonard is, smoothing down his stubborn hair for the umpteenth time.

He’s already cursed at himself for not having a mirror at home, something he’s hardly ever missed before. Way too dangerous with what could come out of them – or, in Bob’s case, could _get_ out - or what magic could be done with them to have one hanging around in his apartment.

He‘s acting like a sixteen year old on his way for a first date. Stupid girls, Gaila and Joce both, talking him into something that wasn’t there. Jim, “having the hots for him”. Ridiculous.

He tightens his grip on the six pack he had bought on his way to Jim’s apartment - another silly thing he’s cursing himself for. Not only does this cut into his meager financial resources, but it also might not be a clever thing to do. Do you bring beer to a professional meeting? But, then, Jim had mentioned the football game tonight, hadn’t he?

Running a hand down his face, he tries to calm down. Breathe, Leonard.

It isn’t even the first time he’s visited Jim at home. He’s been here loads of times, almost knows the place better than Jim, watering his plants when Jim is on another case, vanishing for a few days. Why he even listens to Jocelyn and Gaila is a mystery itself.

Straightening, he reaches for the bell, hoping his jitters won’t mess with its wiring. He hears the sound chime beyond the door and waits. And waits. And waits some more. Frowning, Leonard presses his finger to the bell again, but pauses and doesn’t push. How long has he waited? He doesn’t want to seem impatient, but, at the same time, he feels stupid just standing here.

So he rings again, and counts the seconds under his breath.

At 72, Leonard sets down the six pack, irritated.

He isn’t too early, he made sure of that. After three times showing up half an hour early and finding Jim still in his PJs or wrapped in a towel - laughing at him, of course - Leonard had double-checked to make sure that he was at least five minutes late. And Jim wouldn’t forget about this, not after the way he had sounded on the phone. Leonard frowns.

Jim’s motorcycle, that murderous thing he liked to drive around in his free time, is parked nearby. A few feet away is his car, still standing in the parking lot.

Strange.

Leonard makes his way to a pay phone since he doesn’t have a cell phone. It takes him a few blocks to find one, and he lets out an annoyed breath as he dials Jim’s number. It rings for what feels like an eternity, but there’s no answer. Jim being Jim, he owns three phones - one for each ear and one for emergencies - so Leonard tries every number, listening to a cheery voice mail message over and over.

There has to be something wrong.

He walks back to the door, eyeing it warily, and decides that this qualifies as an emergency. He hasn’t seen a time when Jim failed to answer his cell phone. With a little force of will and a muttered Latin phrase, the lock of the door gives, and Leonard worriedly steps inside.

At first, he thinks a bomb has gone off in the living room. Clothes are strewn everywhere, empty pizza cartons stacked in a corner, dirty socks on every surface.

There isn’t a single spot not littered with magazines, letters, flyers, or dirty laundry.

He scowls, trying to decide whether he needs to call the police or not, but this doesn’t look like a struggle. More like Jim’s brand of organized chaos. Jim is kind of a slob.

This is the first time he’s seen the apartment in this bad of a state, though, and he really needs to have a word with Jim about this.

The kitchen doesn’t look much different, more boxes of junk food and dirty laundry scattered around the place, the fridge nearly as empty as Leonard’s own. He wrinkles his nose as he examines the fridge. The bacteria in this kitchen alone could kill an army. There’s no note on the fridge, no sign anywhere that Jim is going to turn up in a minute.

There is one last door he hasn’t checked. He’s pretty sure the room is as empty as the rest, but opens the door cautiously, anyway. You couldn’t ever tell, could you now.

The bathroom is not big, with a shower stall taking up most of the room. The sink is still wet, tiny hairs from where Jim shaved earlier still clinging to the white porcelain.

Then Leonard sees it, right next to a the tap, squashed between a soap bar and a glass holding a toothbrush.

A green wind-up frog.

Leonard swallows, breath harsh in his own ears. After a while, he drags his eyes away from it, up to the mirror above the sink.

And there on the mirror is what Leonard has been expecting without consciously knowing it, has dreaded seeing ever since Jim hadn’t answered the door.

A note, in something that looks a lot like dried blood.

“Find me. Your friend and I are waiting.”

Leonard stumbles backwards from the mirror as the air around him suddenly becomes hard to breathe and his vision swims. He tries to think, but his brain isn’t working properly, a voice screaming at him that this is his fault, that he didn’t protect Jim like he should have, that he’s been too slow. Again.

He looks at the mirror, at the words in brownish red, standing out in the bathroom’s florescent light. He can’t work with that, couldn't trace Jim by it even if it was his blood. Blood needs to be fresh to have a link to the person it belonged to.

As he looks down, he scans the bathroom for something. A razor, cleaned, a toothbrush, also useless. Leonard lets out a frustrated growl as he spots a comb, blond hair clinging to it.

Hoping Jim doesn’t have a blond girlfriend Leonard doesn’t know about, he picks up the comb, and stalks back to the living room. He's still not sure what to do, but he knows he needs to get outside and cast a spell that will hopefully lead him to Jim.

As he walks and thinks his glance lands on the coffee table. The three pictures of the victims are lying on the glass, spread out like Jim had been looking closely at them, had been trying to figure out something from them.

Leonard is almost past the couch, almost at the door, when he finally realizes it.

The cuts, one next to the other, look like an N.

Leonard frowns as he thinks, gripping the comb harder.

Suddenly, he knows who is behind this, remembers the thing niggling at the back of his mind since this case started, and he lets out a gasp.

He has to find Jim, and quick.


	3. Part 2

Leonard stumbles outside in his haste to find Jim. He crouches down on the pavement, a lump of chalk between his fingers. Trembling fingers draw a circle around him, and he wills his magic into it, quietly whispering Latin phrases, concentrating on Jim. A strange feeling comes over him, like a throb behind his forehead, and he gets up, the faint knowledge that he has to go northeast for a few miles heavy on his mind.

He breaks the circle. Long strides to his car, and he’s dropped the keys to the Beetle a few times before he can stop his hands from shaking. Finally the keys turn and he climbs into the car. He pauses to take a few deep, steadying breaths to calm down, but his nerves are jangling, and he can't stop looking at the comb in his hand.

Can't stop thinking of Jim, of what might be happening to him while Leonard wastes his time sitting in this car, trembling.

The engine coughs once, twice, then black smoke wafts out from under the hood. Leonard curses, slamming his hand on the steering wheel in frustration.

Fucking piece of crap.

His eyes wander to Jim’s car on the parking lot. Jim doesn’t like people driving his precious car, but he can always deal with an angry Kirk later.

He rushes inside Jim’s apartment again, runs back to the living room, scanning the area in search for Jim’s car keys.

He remembers vaguely that he keeps them in a bowl by the door, and takes three long steps to look, but of course they’re not in there, and Leonard lets out a frustrated growl as he turns around, trying to decide whether he should search for them in this clutter, or just come up with another plan.

He really had to talk to Jim about the state his apartment is in.

Drumming his fingers on his thighs, he considers his options. He could get a taxi, tell the driver where to go, but he doesn’t come up with much money digging into his pockets. Seeing as he doesn’t know how long the taxi ride will be, it’s a bad idea.

He could call Jocelyn and ask for a ride, but she would want to come with him, hungry for the opportunity of a good story. And Leonard doesn’t want to put her in danger along with him.

Which leaves only... oh, damn.

Leonard gets out of the car, slamming the door shut, and runs back to the payphone. He concentrates on not to dropping the coins he’s holding. No point in calling the Orion now, given the hour, so he calls his own place, foot wiggling impatiently.

“This is the McCoy’s residence, Chekov speaking. What can I do for you?”

He strains to hear the kid’s voice over the static, and takes another breath. Two wizards on the phone, one nervous, the other worse. He’s glad he can hear anything at all.

“Hey kid, it’s me. Could you do me a favor?” His voice is shaking as much as his hands and he closes his eyes for a second.

“Of course, sir.” He can hear the questioning tone in the kid’s voice.

“You know where the Orion is, right?” Leonard hopes he doesn’t have to take the time and explain the way.

“Sure, I do.”

“Go there and ask Gaila for the keys to her car. I need to borrow it,” he says.

“But what if she won’t give them to me?”.

The static grows worse as Leonard’s frustration rises, and he closes his eyes again. “Just tell her that I need the car. She will. And make sure you bring my staff, my rod, and my revolver.”

"Ok, Mister McCoy, I’ll go. Where are you?"

Leonard gives the kid the address of Jim's place, and walks back to the apartment, trying hard not to pace, to not become more impatient.

Twenty minutes later, a white Porsche 911 drives around the corner. He sighs in relief as a shaking Chekov gets out of it. "This is not a car, this is a wild beast. I am never going to drive this thing again. Oh, and Gaila wants to let you know that if you break the car, she's coming after you."

"Yes, thank you kid." Leonard turns to the car, as a thought strikes him, and he asks, "Look, can you do another thing for me?"

Chekov nods, brown locks bouncing around his head.

“Take this,” Leonard says, handing him a lock of his own hair he keeps in one of his coat pockets just in case, “and trace me with it. I’m guessing I’ll be needing an ambulance when I’m done there.”

“But, I... I don’t think I can...” Chekov turns a deep shade of red.

Leonard takes Chekov by the shoulders, tries not to grip too hard. “Look kid, this is important. I know you can do it. And if you have trouble, ask Bob. He can help you.”

Chekov shudders at that. “Oh, I’d rather not.”

“You scared of him?” Leonard lets go of Chekov again, runs his hands down his shirt.

“He’s a bit creepy. And he will want to come out to help me.”

“Yeah, tell him he can forget about that. And one last thing - call Mike and tell him my car has broken down again. He will give you a lift to my place. Oh, and thank you."

With that he gets behind the steering wheel of the Porsche, breathing slowly. Deliberately grabs for the seatbelt, fastens it with trembling fingers. He fingers the key, touches the shifter. Gaila would flay him alive if he breaks her car too. A look in the rearview mirror tells him that his tools are crammed into the back. His staff doesn’t really fit into this small thing.

This engine doesn't die on him when he goes to start it, roaring into life then settling into a reassuring hum. He hits the throttle and makes his way towards the piers, trying hard to remember to stick to the speed limit, and not rush heedlessly to Jim’s aid. Last thing he needs now is to get pulled over.

+~+

Jim wakes with his body throbbing from pain, starting at his head and going straight to his toes, with plenty of aches in between.

His arms are drawn over his head, hands bound together at the wrists. He flexes, sending pins and needles up his arms as the blood starts flowing. His feet are bare, cold air hitting his toes as he dangles in the air. He’s hanging from the ceiling, he realizes, hearing a rope creak as he shifts his weight.

He lets out a cough as he blinks his eyes open, the tang of blood heavy in his mouth. He can’t see, and he blinks his eyes some more to make sure they’re open. The dark doesn’t go away. It takes him a moment to realize that the itchy feeling on his face and the scent he smells are from something over his head.

He can’t remember how he ended up here, and his heart starts racing as he realizes that he has absolutely no clue as to where he is. Panic starts rising inside of him, and he fights it down.

He huffs out a breath, as he tries to listen for anything that could tell him what is going on around him. But the place is quiet, no voices, no nothing, and Jim curses silently.

Fucking great.

Then there’s the sound of steps coming towards him, echoing through what must be a large room. Jim steels himself for a blow, for more pain, but ends up blinking in surprise as the hood he’s wearing is torn off.

The man in front of him has clearly seen too many movies. He went for the super evil villain look, dark coat and weird symbols drawn on his shaven head.

“The famous Jim Kirk. What a nice way to meet you.” The cold voice sends a shiver down Jim’s spine.

“Who are you?” Jim asks with a rasp, throat dry from fear.

The stranger smiles as he crosses his arms over his chest. “Oh, no one important, at least not to you.”

“What do you want?” Jim moves his wrist slowly, testing the knots of his restraints.

“Oh, I don’t want anything from you. You are, frankly, just bait. Because Leonard will come and try to rescue you, the poor bastard.”

Jim scowls at that. “And then what? You going to kill him?”

Black Cloak ignores the question, walks around Jim. Jim tenses, wary of what’s going to happen next.

The kidnapper stops next to his ear, his hot breath wafting over Jim’s skin as he whispers, “No wonder Leonard is so taken with you.”

Jim muscles are shaking from the strain, but he doesn’t answer, doesn’t give the guy the satisfaction of jerking away.

He simply watches as Black Cloak comes to stand in front of him again. He feels fingers on his waist, digging into his shirt, and Jim draws up a knee in reflex.

He hits the kidnapper in the chest, makes him stumble backwards.

It’s Jim’s turn to smirk, which, admittedly, would look even better if he weren’t dangling from the ceiling.

“You son of a...” The man extends his hand from his chest, mumbling something Jim can’t make out.

A flash of white-hot pain lashes through him, like a fist squeezing his ribs, making it hard to breath. He watches dimly as the man clenches his hand, the invisible vise growing even worse. Then the man drops his hand, and Jim can breathe again, almost chocking as the air hits his lungs.

“You do that again, and I’ll kill you,” Black Cloak says, color rising in his cheeks.

“’Not very good bait if I’m dead,” Jim retorts.

Black Cloak stalks closer again, trying – and failing – to look graceful, clenching the hood between his fingers. The last thing Jim sees is the man’s face, scrunched up in anger, then the hood is back on his head.

“Oh, come on, I already know what you look like. This is so clichéd,” Jim says, earning a punch to the nose. He curses as blood starts trickling down his chin.

+~+

Gravel crunches under his feet as Leonard gets out of the car. He closes the door as quietly as he can and takes a quick glance around. Three old warehouses near the piers stand hunched together in the dark. Jim’s presence is a dull throb in his head, there, but not clear enough to know which warehouse he is in.

Leonard sighs, and closes his eyes, calling up his Sight.

The Sight is a difficult thing to use. It shows, quite like a soulgaze, things and people as they are, branding the image, whatever it is, to Leonard’s mind. He always keeps the image with him at the back of his thoughts, never fading. Some things are nastier than others.

But he can also see magical workings with the Sight, spells and traps and other things that could get in his way. As he opens his eyes now, he can’t see any wards or evil spells waiting for him on two of the warehouses. The last is shrouded in a magical residue, like a fog wafting over it.  
It doesn’t take much of a guess to see that this is where he needs to go.

Using the Sight longer than a few minutes makes it hard to tell reality from the magical vision, so Leonard closes it again, not keen to chance insanity from anything else he might see. The past, present, and possible futures of the warehouses are already enough to give him five nights’ worth of nightmares.

He pulls his silver pentacle out from under his shirt. It’s the only thing he inherited from his mother, a sign of his profession as much as a sign of his belief: the five elements encircled, put into order, working together towards protection. It has helped him in many situations, has suffered enough to look a bit battered. He wills some magic into it now, and a soft blue light emanates from it, lighting the path before him.

He makes it as far as an old battered car standing next to the warehouses before he gets a tingle down his spine warning him to duck.

The glimpse he catches of two goons standing guard in front of the right warehouse is a big hint, too.

He crouches behind the car and Listens.

Listening is not so much a magical talent as a skill Leonard has picked up over the years, allowing him to concentrate on one thing and close out the rest. He’s quite sure more people would be able to do it if they’d put enough effort into it.

The guards are talking softly with each other about the football match they’re missing, discussing the best players on each team and making bets on who’s going to win.

He studies them from his hidden position. Two guys that look more like walking wardrobes than regular men, talking, yes, but scanning the area closely as they argue. He guesses they couldn’t string two sentences together when it comes to a topic other than sports, but they look like they could hurt him rather badly.

Leonard slowly extends his arm to the ground, forces his will into it as he whispers. He feels the rush of it rippling through the gravel, making the car shake. The goons have two seconds of looking startled then the small earthquake hits them, exactly as Leonard had meant it to. Their heads knock together as they hit the ground.

Leonard smiles smugly.

He gets up, smoothes down his coat, then walks up to the unconscious guards. They won’t be out for long, not from this, so he walks past them as swiftly as he can. As he enters the warehouse he wills the door shut to hold the guards off for a bit when they wake.

He takes out his pentacle again in the darkness of the interior. The dirty grey floor is bare, save for small specks of something in a loose pattern. Leonard crouches down, only to find out what he had feared it was - blood.

He scans his surroundings, as far as the cone of light goes, making out a large room with nothing in it. He walks forward, pentacle dangling from his hand, trying not to make too much noise. He wants to find Jim before he runs into Jim’s kidnapper.

A pained groan makes him turn to his right, and he curses under his breath as the light falls on the figure before him. Jim is hanging from the ceiling, a rope attached to a carabineer holding him a few inches above the ground. His arms strain to hold his weight – Leonard can hear his ragged breathing from here. There’s a hood on his slumped head, blood trickling from beneath it down to his chest.

Leonard is at Jim’s side faster than a blink of an eye, reaching up to release him from his bindings. Jim starts struggling the moment Leonard touches him, jerking away as a strangled moan escapes his mouth.

“Shhh, it’s me. Stop moving. Jim, it’s me,” he says as he wraps his gently around Jim’s waist.

Jim obliges, and Leonard reaches into his coat pocket, retrieves a knife, and cuts the rope around Jim’s wrist. Jim slumps against him, taking Leonard by surprise. They topple to the floor as Leonard catches Jim at the last second, cushioning Jim’s fall with his body. He pulls the hood off of Jim’s head and tosses it aside.

“Bones?” Jim blinks at him surprised, like he can’t believe he’s really here.

“Who else did you expect?” Leonard’s scowl is only half-hearted as he stares at Jim’s bleeding nose. He fumbles for the handkerchief in his coat pocket.

“I … I can’t believe you found me. How, how did you…?” Jim asks with a confused look on his face.

“Shhh. Later. We have to…”

Jim head slumps against his shoulder then. Leonard carefully checks his face: eyes closed, breathing shallow.

Poor kid went unconscious mid-sentence.

He wants to pull Jim up and get out, get him to a doctor or into a hospital, make sure he’s alright. Wants to get back to Gaila and return her car. Wants to crawl into his bed, and sleep for the next three days.

But there’s someone he needs to talk to.

Leonard takes out his lump of chalk, and lays Jim out on the ground. He considers, then takes out his .44, placing it within reach if Jim wakes, just in case. He crouches down and draws a circle around his unconscious friend, willing magic into it as he closes the circle. .

He gets up again, smoothes down his coat again, then calls out to the empty warehouse, “Okay, then, come out already!”

He feels the air stir as magic shifts around someone unseen, hears a cackling sound he’s almost forgotten. It only vaguely resembles laughter. Then Leonard sees him.

+~+

Bruce’s hand tightens around Leonard’s neck as he drags him into the lab, towards the circle Mark’s standing in. Their mentor recites unfamiliar, eerie-sounding spells in a hoarse voice. This isn’t the first time Leonard’s been forced into a late night ritual, but something feels off.

Leonard turns to Bruce, wants to ask him what’s going on, but the words freeze in his mouth. The symbols Bruce has been jotting down his notebook now cover the other boy’s hands and arms in dark paint.

Leonard’s not sure what’s going on, why he’s so frightened by the chanting that fills the room along with the buzz of forceful magic, but he struggles to get free anyway. Mark’s chanting grows louder as his mentor grabs a rabbit, slits it open, blood spilling into a bowl sitting within the circle.

Leonard gasps. Blood magic means _dark_ magic, means that Mark is calling up something evil, and Leonard feels dread spread inside of him.  
Something sits heavy in the air, and Leonard can tell, though he doesn’t know how, that the ritual’s gone wrong. Then, as Mark gestures impatiently, Bruce shoves Leonard towards the circle without so much as a word. A voice inside Leonard’s head screams at him to run away even as he stumbles towards his mentor.

His mentor, who raises a dagger, blood still dripping from its tip. Leonard’s fear flares, and then Mark, the room, everything, seems made out of fire, flames growing with his panic.

Leonard’s head spins from calling up that much magic. An eternity later his vision clears, and he realizes that beams of wood are already tumbling down as the ceiling gives way to the blaze. Leonard raises his arm for protection, coughing from the smoke and burnt embers flying through the air. He can hear Mark screaming, somehow sounding distant, still in the circle.

The smell of burnt flesh makes him choke.

Bruce is on the carpet, unconscious, blood trickling down his face, and Leonard still stands there, confused, unsure of when – how - everything happened.

He knows he should be running, should get out while he can. But he can’t leave Bruce behind.

The other boy had seemed… Mark had meddled with his mind, Leonard was sure, and as much as he doesn’t like Bruce, he can’t let him here to burn, to scream. Hell, he hadn’t wanted to set _Mark_ on fire, either.

Leonard takes a step towards Bruce, bends down to lift him from the ground. With a loud creak a massive support beam tumbles from the ceiling, crashing down between the two boys. Leonard jumps back just in time, coughing heavily.

Flames roar high and the smoke stings in Leonard’s eyes and he realizes that he can’t reach or rescue Bruce.

He can't stay, can’t stand the heat, the screams of his dying mentor loud in his ears. He turns towards the door, half-tumbles out of the burning house. As the house collapse behind him, he hears more crashing noises, Mark’s quieting screams, the roaring flames.

Leonard makes it to a tree, bends over, and vomits on the damp, green grass.

+~+

Bruce – no, Nero, the name he had given himself as a teenager – has grown into an imposing man, broad shoulders and heavy muscles. He wears a long, black coat, and the symbols he’d drawn on his head all those years ago are tattoos now, permanently edged into his skin with dark ink.

Leonard watches incredulously as the man comes closer, stoppping a few feet away.

A man Leonard had thought dead for the last fourteen years. He struggles to understand. How could Nero be here, holding a big wooden staff in his hand? How could he have escaped the burning house Leonard remembers so clearly?

“Missed me?” Nero’s cold voice jolts him from his thoughts.

Leonard shakes his head as if to clear it. “I thought… How… I thought you were dead?”

Nero smirks at him. Leonard notices dimly how his fingers are gliding over the staff in his hands, as if even after all these years, he can’t keep them still for long. “As if your little fire could have killed me. I made it out of the house while you were still busy puking your guts out.”

Leonard can’t quite believe what he’s hearing, yet Nero’s here, the blue light from Leonard’s amulet flickering on his skin.

“You’re wondering why I didn’t kill you back then, right?” Nero asks.

Leonard hadn’t, but doesn’t bother telling Nero that. Better to keep the man talking while Leonard tries to figure out a plan to get Jim and himself out of here alive.

Nero continues like he hadn’t expected an answer to his question, anyway. “I wanted to, believe me. But then I thought I’d better wait for a time when I could hurt you more.”

“So why now?” Leonard asks. His fingers feel sweaty as he tightens his grip on his staff.

“I have been looking for you all these years, didn’t you know?” Nero keeps talking like he hasn’t heard Leonard. “Imagine my surprise when I found your ad in the yellow pages last year. I couldn’t believe it. But there you were, and it seemed like finally, you had something to lose.” Nero waves a finger into the dark.

Leonard splutters. “What, Jim? But we aren’t…”

Nero sneers. “Don’t think I couldn’t see the way you look at him, the way you smile.”

Leonard’s eyes widen, but he doesn’t press the matter. This is not the time to discuss his feelings. “I still don’t understand why you killed three innocent people.”

Nero huffs out a small laugh at that. “I made the mistake in assuming you’re a good little private investigator, since your ad says so. I thought you would see the signs I left you.”

Leonard rakes his brain for a plan to get out of this, but nothing presents itself, so he tries to hold off Nero a little longer. “Signs? What signs?”

“Leonard, are you blind? These men, they all looked like you!”

Leonard blinks, thinks of dark hair, green eyes, broad chests.

Oh, fuck.

“Besides,” Nero adds, “I thought the frogs would give it away.”

Leonard cocks his head, remembering a pond, a teenage boy catching frogs and easily contemplating killing the creatures. “How was I supposed to know?” Leonard balls the fingers of his free hand into a fist.

Nero shrugs at that, as if Leonard’s stupidity isn’t his problem.

“So, you kidnapped Jim. Why?” Leonard asks as he tries to keep Nero talking and to pull the pieces together.

“I got impatient. Thought it was time we finally meet. Time for you to finally die.” The way he says it, in this cold, distant voice, causes an involuntary shudder to run down Leonard’s spine. “Nero, I never did you any harm.”

Nero eyes flash angrily at that. “If it hadn’t been for you, I would have had a home, a father. But no, you had to ruin everything. I ended up on the streets, doing cheep magic tricks to scrape by.”

Leonard flinches at that. With a bit less luck, he would have ended up the same way.

If only Leonard had known…

“Nero, I didn’t want this to happen. I was afraid…”

“I don’t care!” Nero shouts.

“”Nero, this is crazy. Let me help you.”

“What, are you going to prepare tea and have us discuss our feelings? Will you help me overcome my issues from childhood? You're pathetic!" Nero tightens his grip on his staff again, knuckles turning white. “Your little police officer will arrest me the moment he gets his hands on me. It’s too late, Leonard.”

Leonard lips part as he tries to think of something else to say, to keep Nero from killing him, to keep him from killing Jim.

But Nero has apparently heard enough, and suddenly he’s on the offensive. He mumbles some Latin words and a rush of energy flies at Leonard, making the air crackle. Leonard, who’s been trained by plenty of experience since that fire, lifts his left hand and the charms on his bracelet clink as they dangle from his wrist. The blast of energy hits the newly formed shield, and blasts around it, striking the walls and roaring up to the ceiling.

"You think you can hide behind this all night? Won’t be long now, Leonard."

Another flash of energy hits his shield, harder this time. Leonard directs more force into the spell, wending off Nero’s blast.

Course after course shoot towards Leonard. He’s not sure how long he’ll be able to keep this up, staying purely defensive. Keeping his left hand up, Leonard plants the staff in his other hand on the ground, jaw set as a stubborn anger rises in him.

He doesn't want to hurt Nero, but if the guy doesn't stop trying to kill him soon, he'll have to act. He hears another Latin phrase, and reaches inside himself, reaches for the anger and the fear for Jim, reaches for his will. He shouts "Forzare!" as he points his staff at Nero.

A heavy rush of energy gusts through the warehouse, hitting Nero hard in the chest, and he’s sent flying, smacking hard into the wall behind him. Leonard takes a shaky breath as he hears an insane laugh.

"Is this all you can do? Mark was right, you _are_ hopeless."

Leonard grinds his teeth, tries hard not to be angry, to not put too much strength behind his spells and burn the whole place down.  
He doesn't think he’s succeeding, feels almost to helpless at the emotions that rise inside as Nero climbs to his feet again.

Bastard.

”Nero, stop it!” Leonard yells terrified. “I don’t want to kill you!”

"Why not? You killed our father! Destructo!"

Sheer waves of energy flood out of Nero's arms, hitting Leonard's shield like a locomotive in full speed, almost toppling him over. He groans with the effort to hold up his shield in defense against Nero. Leonard extends his other arm, points his staff at Nero again. "Fuego!".

A blast of red hot fire bursts from the tip of his staff, burning through the night air. Nero sees it coming and lungess to his left, rolling as he hits the ground.

This is what Leonard has wanted: Nero is momentarily distracted, giving Leonard a few seconds to think. Fuck, the guy is strong. Leonard tries to remember a useful spell quickly. Nero doesn’t do him much of a favor, though, quickly rising again. His hands come together like a twisted prayer, and Leonard dimly hears him chanting, "Forze, forze, forze."  
A sudden pain hits him in the chest, despite the shield, despite the distance. Blood begins to trickle down his chest, under his torn shirt, and he can’t help his surprised gasp.

"Didn't think your shield was really going to help, did you?"

Leonard gasps louder as the cut unexpectedly deepens, the pain forcing him to his knees. He looks down his chest, at the cut running diagonally down his skin. Red drops on the floor, and he is at the edge of consciousness, strength almost gone. It’s with his last bit of will that he lashes out, shouting a Latin word.

Nero staggers from the hit but recovers almost immediately with a grin.

Leonard looks up, looks into the mad eyes of a boy he once knew. He tries to say something, to talk some sense into him, but it’s not there, the words or the strength to say them. Instead he reaches inside himself. It’s the least he can do, throwing one last curse with the last bit of power he has.

Then there is a loud bang, a gun shot ringing in the dark. Nero jerks, howls with pain as blood spatters out from his shoulder. Leonard turns around to see Jim, standing on shaking legs, gun in hand, aiming steadily at Nero, a grim expression on his face.

+~+

Darkness fades to a dull grey light. He hears voices talking, but can't make sense of the words. He’s not even sure they are speaking entirely in English. The ground is solid underneath him, and he remembers Bones coming – coming for him, cutting him from the ceiling, lying him down. He remembers hearing a mutter of something, remembers hearing a scratching sound, remembers the smell of chalk that hadn't made sense.

He blinks his eyes open, trying to focus on something, anything.

Bones stands there, back to Jim as he talks to Black Cloak. Bones’ tone is the one police officers use with bank robbers and kidnappers, the one that was supposed to talk some sense into criminals, talk them down.

That never worked.

Jim slowly sits up then shifts onto his knees. A ring of chalk surrounds him, and he dimly thinks that Bones must have thought this could protect him, could keep him safe. Luckily there’s a .44 revolver, too.

He grabs the revolver, looks quickly into the chamber to check whether it's loaded, then draws back the hammer with his thumb and back again. He feels more secure now.

A laugh cuts through his thoughts, and he looks up again. They’re still standing there, facing each other, talking about something that doesn’t make much sense to Jim, and he frowns.

Bones plants his feet on the ground, and Jim’s not sure he's not seeing things, but for a flickering moment, there’s a silver light around Bones' left wrist. It’s almost like the one Jim thought he’d seen when Bones had removed the hood from his face.

He feels the blast before he hears the yell of Black Cloak. It’s a tingle of energy around him, like the air’s filled up with static and an acid taste. He watches as Bones staggers, but continues to stand his ground as the energy dissolves around him. Jim can actually see the energy hit the air, instead. Bones plants his staff to the ground, shouting something that sounds ancient, and the other man hits the wall behind him. So, that magic thing wasn’t all pretense after all.

Either that, or Jim had gone mad without noticing.

A wave of dizziness hits Jim, and he blinks his eyes, trying to focus.

“You killed our father!”

Jim frowns. That couldn’t be true. Bones, kill someone? Not very likely, wacko.

The men are still facing each other, and Jim has the feeling this will go on ‘til one of them drops dead to the floor. He can’t let that happen, can’t sit here and do nothing, and his gaze falls to the revolver in his hands.

He lifts the gun with trembling hands, aims at Black Cloak. A thought strikes him, something Bones once said about protective circles, something he didn’t take serious at that time, but now comes back to him. He reaches out a shaking hand and hits a solid wall of nothing. Damn.

The two wizards are fighting in earnest now, and Jim curses. Stupid, overprotective Bones.

When he hears chanting he snaps up his head, watches as Bones hits the ground with one knee, his hand to his chest. There’s blood dripping from the front of Bones’ torn shirt, and Jim curses again.

His eyes fall to the line of chalk on the ground.

Another snatch of what Bones told him comes back to him, something about how a circle broken loses its protective power. Shrugging to himself, he smudges the chalk line with his thumb. A tingle rushes around him and he reaches out again. The wall is gone.

He stands up, widening his stance automatically, straightens his back. He can prevent his hands from shaking if he breathes evenly enough, he’s sure.

The other wizard opens his mouth, takes a breath - and Jim shoots.

The bullet hits in the shoulder, blood flying from the wound. In his peripheral field of vision Jim sees Bones twist his head around, looking bewildered.

He doesn’t lower the gun, finger on the trigger as he watches Nero.

Black Cloak moves his hand, opens his mouth, but before he can cast another of his spells, Jim shoots again.

He’s sees Bones move as something heavy hits Jim in the chest, half-freight train, half-sledgehammer, and he groans, weapon dropping from his hand as he falls, hitting the ground hard.

+~+

Leonard looks down at the dead man before him. His ears are still ringing from the shots, so he can’t hear the harsh breaths coming from his mouth as he focuses on keeping himself from throwing up. He hadn’t wanted this to happen, hadn’t wanted Nero to die.

And yet, he feels nothing. He knows it’s shock, that soon enough he will start trembling and crying, or shouting, or something. He’ll probably feel glad that Jim shot Nero, that it wasn’t him there lying on the dirty ground, a gaping wound in his chest.

He’s not sure how long he stands there. The ringing in his ears fades away to a quiet buzzing sound that Leonard will be hearing for a few hours. And above the buzz there’s the sound of sirens wailing in the distance.

He lets out a shaking breath, almost smiling.

He will buy Chekov the biggest bottle of vodka he can find in this damn town.

A groan snaps him out of his frozen thoughts. Jim is struggling to sit up from where he’d fallen on the ground. Leonard rushes to him and kneels down. He’d acted quickly, had thrown another protective spell between Jim and Nero’s final curse, but the curse still knocked the kid hard right in the chest.

“Jim!”

“Did I get him? Is he dead?”

“Yeah, he’s dead. He’s dead, Jim,” Leonard says, fingers brushing over Jim’s arm.

“Good.” Jim struggles some more to rise, ending up propped up on his elbows.

“No, stay still. I don’t know how bad you’re hurt. You’ll only make it worse.”

Jim shoots him a glare, but Leonard ignores it, pushing at Jim’s shoulders gently until he’s lying down again, head in Leonard’s lap.

“Well, Bones, so you do care for me,” Jim says with a weak smile.

“Oh, shut up, stupid,” Leonard says stroking Jim’s hair off his forehead.

Jim looks up at him with tired eyes, but Leonard avoids his gaze, as always. He ends up focused on Jim’s lips instead That’s one of the dumber things he’s done in the last couple of days, because, all of a sudden, he wants to kiss Jim so badly it hurts. But better that than for him to initiate a soulgaze in the state he’s in.

They sit there. Jim’s eyes slide shut as rain starts falling heavily outside, the sound of it almost soothing as Leonard tries to not bleed all over his friend.

Soon enough, Leonard begins to feel woozy and his knees start hurting, but he stays on the ground, smoothing a hand down Jim’s forehead. He feels for a pulse occasionally, something his father, a country doctor back in Georgia, had taught him at a very early stage in his life.

Leonard listens to the rain hitting the roof, gently running a touch along Jim's cheek. He shivers, and thinks of casting a warming spell, but his magic is running low, so he just keeps close to Jim.

Finally the ambulance arrives, and then people are shouting outside, flashlights weaving around, and a shaky looking Chekov is standing next to him, still clinging to the lock of hair Leonard had given him.

“Kid, I think you don’t need that anymore.” Leonard lets out a relieved breath as he takes his hair from Chekov’s fingers.

He tries to stand up once the paramedics bustle away with Jim, but a strong hand presses down on his shoulder. “Easy there, you’ve lost quite a bit of blood.”

He blinks up at the familiar voice. Sulu, the coroner, smiles down at him while cutting off Leonard’s shirt. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m working an emergency shift at the hospital. And that guy”, he nods to Nero, “well, it looks like I’ll need to examine him later for the day job.”

“Oh, good,” Leonard mumbles as he lets Sulu treat his wound.

“You’re lucky that it’s not a deep cut, even if it’s bleeding like mad.”

Leonard harrumpfs, and looks at Chekov, who’s still there, now bouncing like a three year old on Christmas morning.

“That’s quite the apprentice you have there. Made me follow him all over town,” Sulu says with a smile.

Leonard watches as Chekov turns beet red at that, and just says, “Yeah, great kid.”

Sulu chuckles, and Leonard does his best to ignore the gaze Sulu is giving the kid. Hell, he doesn’t want to have that conversation with Chekov.

“Ok, Mister, this is the best I can do. You’d better get home and lie down, no heavy lifting in the next few hours, or I’ll come after you.”

“No such luck, Sulu. Looks like they want to talk to me,” Leonard says, nodding at the shining badges approaching them. A blink of an eye later he’s sitting in a police car, not in handcuffs, but still being treated rather… carefully.

He zones out for a while, only coming back when he’s at the police station, his heavy coat around his naked shoulders and hot coffee in front of him. A young blond woman, almost too young to already be at this job, eyes him warily. “You mind telling us what went down back there?”

“The truth? You won’t believe me, officer,” Leonard answers as he rubs a hand over his face.

“It’s Lieutenant, Lieutenant Rand. And try me.”

“The guy… I knew him once. Always thought he died fourteen years ago,, but nope, he turns up here out of nowhere.” Leonard reaches for the coffee cup, slowly tracing the rim. “He sent me plastic frogs, like the ones in the victims he’d killed to get my attention, apparently. But I didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late - he’d already abducted Kirk. I followed him, we fought, Kirk shot him, the guy almost killed Kirk, but Kirk got him in the end. And that is, as they say, the end.” Leonard rakes a hand through his hair as he looks at Rand.

Rand eyes him skeptically, fingers tapping on the table in front of her. “So you say you knew this guy?”

Leonard looks at the woman with a raised eyebrow. “I think I just said that.”

“So you were his accomplice?” Rand leans forward eagerly.

“No, I wasn’t. I didn’t even know he was still alive.”

“And why is that?” Rand asks, twirling the pen she’s holding between her fingers.

Leonard waves his hand dismissively, and reaches for his coffee. “Long story.”

“I think we have all night.” Rand makes it a point to slowly lean back in her chair.

“Oh come on, really? It’s not like you have any link, any proof I’m connected to the murders or Kirk’s kidnapping, so what do you want?”

“I want to know what happened!” Rand shouts, hitting a hand on the table.

”I told you what happened!”

They stare at each other, both breathing hard. Leonard is going to stick to his story, knows only too well that telling the truth will only lead to them believing he’s a raving lunatic.

Leonard leans forward, puts down his coffee. “Look, why don’t you just ask Kirk? You know I’m working with him.”

”Yes, we know that. And we will question Captain Kirk as soon as he is ready for it. But for now, I really want to hear your side of the story.” Rand tugs a strand of hair behind her ear.

Leonard groans.

After what feels like a long, long time, they let him go.

He would thank them, but his snark is as long gone as his magic. He can barely walk, but his steps take him along the road bit by bit, shivering under his coat. He’s glad that at this time at night there are not many people around to give him curious glances. It’s a long walk back to his apartment, and on any other day he’d take a taxi but he still doesn’t have any goddamn money on him.

Leonard reaches his apartment eventually and slumps down on the coach. He wonders if Jim is still awake, but he can’t bring himself to go to the hospital, isn’t sure he can face him now anyway. He curls up on the coach, intending to get up and change into other, cleaner clothes, then get into bed and sleep off his exhaustion. In a minute.

His eyes flutter closed, and five seconds later he’s snoring into the leather.


	4. Part 3

Jim looks up at the ceiling watching a balloon bounce back and forth in the corner. He’s bored, wants to go home, but the doctors still aren’t done with him. Something about wanting to make sure he isn’t going to fall apart the moment he leaves the hospital. According to them it had been close to a miracle that he had nothing but a few bruises, not too severe, no internal bleeding, nothing needing stitches. They still wanted to monitor his recovery, make sure he hadn’t concussed his head given the way he’d hit it back at the warehouse. He suspects that this reaction might also be because he’d kept telling people that Bones could do magic, that he’d seen it.

He might have been rambling a bit on the way to the hospital.

He could tell from the way the doctors looked at him and the nurses talked to him. They all thought he’d lost a few of his marbles, which only makes him more eager to leave this place. In the mean time he’s had a lot of visitors during the last few days: coworkers, subordinates, his mother, a few girls he’s slept with. But there’s only one man he’d like to see.

But still no Bones. Jim’s not sure what had happened at the warehouse, what he’d seen, what he’d imagined. He wants to talk to the other man, but so far no luck. When his door opens, he’s hoping it’s a doctor coming to finally release him, but it’s a new woman, five feet something, wearing a business suit and a patch over her left eye. Definitely not a doctor.

“Jim Kirk, in the flesh. About time, too,” the woman says with a smile.

“I feel a bit weird when people know my name and I don’t know theirs. You are?”

“Jocelyn Darnell, from the Mystic.” She extends a hand. Jim notices that in the other, she holds a small recorder.

He scowls at her. “I’m sorry, no interviews.”

Darnell lets her hand drop again. “But our readers want to know the truth.”

“The truth? The truth is that I don’t even know what happened, and since Bones hasn’t even show up to talk to me…” Jim trails off frustrated.

He hears the woman chuckle. “Leonard won’t come to a hospital. He thinks he messes up the electricity. And he hates them.”

He frowns. “You know him?”

“Better than anyone else,” Darnell answers with a small smile.

Jim sits up in his bed, wraps his arms around his drawn up knees, and squints at the woman in front of him. “You’re his ex.”

Her smile widens, one hand coming up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “So he does talk about me?”

Jim shrugs. “Sometimes.”

“I hope it’s all good things.”

“Sometimes. But, frankly, most of it’s grumbling about the fact that you wouldn’t keep your nose out of his business.”

She laughs at that. “That sounds very much like him.”

“And you ruined his boots.”

“He _would_ tell you about those boots he loved. I bought him new ones, you know? But he kept complaining that they weren’t the same.” A wistful look appears on Darnell’s face as she remembers the moment.

“So I guess he still tells that story about our first soulgaze?” She says as she looks at Jim.

“Yeah, he does. Not that I understood one word of what he said.”

Bones’ ex girlfriend leans closer. “Well, it’s hard to explain. You see everything the person is, without any pretence or lie, without a hiding place.  
You find out everything, every little thing, every embarrassing story. The things you hide, the things you are not proud of.” Darnell looks out of the window, at something in the distance.

Jim leans forward, licking his lips. Hearing this from someone other than Bones makes him rethink his doubts.

“It _is_ quite an experience. I still dream of it, sometimes.” Darnell’s voice is almost a whisper.

“Was it that bad?” Jim asks.

Jocelyn turns her head, studying him. Jim tries not to squirm. “I can’t really tell you, I wouldn’t know how to describe it. There was just… so much guilt and death and… I really can’t put it into words.”

“Well, at least that’s what Bones always says, too.”

“And he’s the expert,” the reporter says with a small smile.

Jim flashes an answering smile at that, and looks back at the ceiling, watching the balloons twirl as he asks, “So, about that magic thing…”

He sees her shrug out of the corner of his eyes. “You get used to it. Easier than his almost neurotic neatness.”

Jim snorts, eyes still on the ceiling. “I think I could live with that.”

He sees Darnell finger move around the edges of the recorder. “You know, you should really go and see him. He needs someone like you, you know.”

Jim suppresses another snort. He looks at the woman for a moment, makes a decision. “You still want that interview?”

She nods at the offer, finger already on the record button.

“OK, what do you want to know?”

+~+

Leonard refuses to move. He’s found that one sprawled position on his couch, the most comfortable one possible. One leg thrown over the back, one hand on his stomach and the other behind his head, yeah, he could easily spend the rest of the day like this. Granted, it would even be better if he wasn’t freezing his ass off, but that is just a minor draw-back.

A thump comes from outside, like something just hit the ground hard. He lifts his head then shrugs, intending to ignore it, whatever it is. For once, the world in general could well leave him alone. Spock, who had been dozing on the mantelpiece, lets out a meow, head raised and turned toward the door. His ears twitch as he lets out a second annoyed-sounding meow.

“You get it. I’m busy lazing around,” Leonard says.

That earns him a look that’s too close to reproachful to be ignored, and he groans in defeat. “Fine, I’ll get it.”

He gets up, grumbling under his breath. Bare feet hit the cool laminate in his entryway, and he already half-knows what he’ll find once he opens the door. Wouldn’t be the first time a certain someone left him something to read.

A newspaper lies on the ground, and Leonard smiles at how predictable his ex girlfriend sometimes is. He doesn’t subscribe to any paper, and only buys the things when he needs them as a potion ingredient.

There’s a post-it note stuck to today’s issue of the _Mystic_ , yellow against grey. A note in neat handwriting reads: _Page 3, thought you would like to read it. Jocelyn._ She even put a smiley next to her name, like she used to do when they were still dating.

Curious, Leonard walks back to the kitchen counter, sits down, and opens the paper.

A photo of Jim, smiling and in uniform, jumps right at him. Jim looks very young in the picture, and Leonard can’t decide whether it’s because he’s looking at an old image or it’s the boyish grin Jim is giving the photographer. Probably both.

He lets his gaze drop to Jim’s eyes, taking advantage of the fact that a photograph can’t initiate a soulgaze. And even though it’s just a black-and-white picture, a lifeless piece of paper that he’s staring at, Leonard feels… warmer. He can almost see the different shades of blue, the special gleam to Jim’s eyes. He wishes he could look as easily into the eyes of the real Jim and get lost in that gaze.

He shakes his head, feeling stupid at mooning over a photo, and starts reading the interview. He’s halfway through it, back on the couch, after tiring of the stool, when there’s a knock on his door. He rolls his eyes as he gets up to answer it. He’s almost certain it’s Jocelyn, who wants to talk about her interview. Or Chekov, who wants to care for him, or even worse, talk about Sulu.

“Hell, what is it today? Can’t you just leave an old man…?” he starts saying as he opens the door… to the smile he’d just been drooling over. “… alone?” The end of his tirade slips from his mouth as he looks at Jim.

Jim, who’s covered in bruises, sporting a fading black eye - now more of a greenish-yellow tint - and still manages to look good.

“Hey, Bones. Haven’t heard from you in a couple of days, and I thought I’d check up on you, make sure you didn’t drown in your cauldron. How about a beer?” His voice is almost painfully cheerful as he delivers the words, waving around a six pack with one hand and clutching a pizza carton with the other.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in bed, or something?” Leonard is not sure he wants to see Jim now.

“If I’d listened to my doctors,” Jim says, shrugging, “but they’re fussing about me way too much, anyway. I was bored, and it’s not like I’m dying, or anything.

Leonard sighs. He could tell Jim to leave him alone, but something in the way Jim looks at him makes him step aside. “Well, come in already.”

Jim puts down the six pack and pizza on the coffee table, takes the few steps toward the couch, and settles in on the floor in front of it. Just like he always does when he comes over. Leonard follows his lead, resting his back against the black leather, and stares determinedly at the fireplace in front of him. Leonard can smell the pizza, and his stomach churns as he tries to think of something to say.

“So, magic, hm?” Jim finally breaks the silence.

Leonard purses his lips. “I told you so.”

“I know, I know. Would you’ve believed it, if someone told you something like that?”

Leonard shrugs his shoulders. “Probably not.”

They fall silent after that, but Leonard can feel Jim’s not done yet.

“What that guy said…” he starts.

“Nero.”

“Yeah, him. What he said, about your dad…”

“You heard that? I thought you were unconscious.”

“I was kind of in and out. So, did he tell the truth? Did you kill your father?” Jim sounds like he's not sure he wants to hear the answer to that.

“Well, yes and no,” Leonard says, running a hand through his hair.

“When I was fourteen, my father got really sick. Pancreatic cancer. He was tired of the morphine and the pain and… didn’t want to die a slow death. My mother, she was already dead, so it was me and him, and he begged me to end it for him. I couldn’t say no. He was still living with me, and one day, I increased his morphine dose…” He pauses as tears sting in his eyes.

“Bones…”

Leonard holds up a hand. “I’m not sure whether anyone ever found out. I know I didn’t tell anyone ‘til Jocelyn.”

He can hear the frown in Jim’s voice as he asks, “So how come Nero knew about it?”

“He didn’t.” Bones takes a deep breath. He hadn’t thought it would be so hard to tell this story.  
“We had the same mentor, Mark, who became involved with dark magic. One day he just flipped his lid and started summoning demons. It scared the shit out of me.

“Nero, he thought it was brilliant, and joined him in his activities, though I still doubt it was out of his own will. One day, Mark went one step too far, almost killed me. So I stopped him. Set fire to the lab, to the house, only just got out. I thought both were dead, but apparently not. I never meant to kill them, I just... lost control.

“Nero always considered Mark as his father. As our father, in fact.”

Jim lets out a long breath. “Dude, and here I was thinking I was the one with the father issues.”

Leonard looks up at him, and then settles his gaze down again as Jim continues.

”My father died when I was born, same day. He was shot in a raid when my mother was in labor. All I’ve ever had was a photograph, and the stories my mother told me. When Pike recruited me he tried the whole ‘your father would be proud’ speech. As if I’d care how a guy I’ve never met would feel about me.”

Leonard bites his lower lip, draws in a breath, not sure what to say. He doesn’t expect to have the silence broken by Jim chuckling.

“Man, but we are quite a couple.”

Leonard smiles at that, and suddenly finds himself looking into Jim’s eyes, seeing the light reflecting in them. He quickly looks at the rug again.  
A moment, and he feels fingers under his chin, tugging slightly.

“Bones.” Jim’s voice is soft, almost pleading.

Leonard shakes his head.

“Bones, please, let me see,” Jim pleads even softer.

“I’m not sure you’re gonna like what you can see there.” Leonard isn’t sure why his voice sounds so hoarse all of a sudden.

“I’m pretty sure it won’t make a difference.”

Leonard closes his eyes, swallows. Hell, he hadn’t wanted to do this so badly since he met Jocelyn. The fingers are still under chin, and a thumb strokes lightly along his jaw, and Leonard’s resistance sort of melts away. He looks up, looks into eyes full of fondness and trust and, after the first three seconds, feels the familiar pull, the feeling of surging forward and down, like plunging into a deep hole.

The first thing that hits him is the peace he feels inside Jim. He hadn’t been expecting this, had thought it would be more chaotic, more bitter, more hardened from years on the beat. But he feels like he’s on an open field, cornflower blue sky above his head, everything free and light and happy.

There are dark spots, inevitable at this age and stage of Jim’s life. The death of his father, a time at school when everyone laughed at the stack of books with legs, the kid with the thick glasses. So many cases, deaths, robberies, abductions, parents beating their children. They’ve all left stains.

Jim keeps it down, pushes it aside with the good things he sees everyday, fights it with the passion he feels for his job, the responsibility he has for the people of San Francisco.

And here, in this brightly lit place, Leonard feels desire, feels love and friendship tangled together, and he sees Jim clinging to someone like his life depends on it. The someone has his back turned to Leonard, but it’s hard to mistake who he’s looking at. He recognizes his coat, his cowboy boots, his dark pants, his dark hair.

It’s then that he realizes the soulgaze is over, and Jim is kissing him, really kissing him, lips sliding over his, tongue tracing the seam of his bottom lip.

+~+

At first, Bones’ soul feels dark as night. All the people that died, the relationships that didn’t work out – Jim feels like he’s wading through black fog. The sense of responsibility for almost everything is downright depressing, and a part of Jim understands why Bones is always so grumpy.

He really needs to teach Bones to relax from time to time.

Even worse are all those hideous creatures. Vampires, ghouls, baring their teeth as they try to kill Bones. Demons that could get to Bones if they gathered to many information about him. Blood and body parts, fires and dark magic – Jim can understand why people would throw up after seeing this.

Good thing Jim is not easily shocked, has seen enough in his job to just walk past all the horror around him.

He feels like he’s going deeper, or forward, or whatever direction you go in if there is no sense of direction in the first place. He eventually finds himself in a warm and cozy place. This is where Bones goes when he’s happy, or he needs to feel better, Jim can tell by the way he can’t stop smiling himself. It has a feel of _home_ , and he half-expects to see part of Bones’ family hanging around. Instead he sees himself, standing in front of a window, naked to the waist, staring outside. Bones is behind him, softly kissing his neck.

He feels the tugging sensation again, and he’s back on the rug, facing Bones. He’s recovered before the wizard, who is still staring at him unblinkingly, still lost in whatever he sees there. Jim finds himself looking at Bones, taking in his relaxed face, the bangs falling in his face, and before he knows it, he’s leaning forward, pressing his lips to Bones’. He feels it when Bones comes back, feels him struggle with reality, feels him stiffen. Then Bones’ lips are gone, and Jim opens his eyes.

Bones is looking at him, eyes wide, like he’s searching him for something.

Jim thinks back to what Bones told him once, how the soulgaze has affected other people, and realizes what Bones is waiting for. Panic. Rejection. For Jim to leave and never talk to him again. For him to throw up, perhaps.

Jim smiles instead, leans forward and kisses Bones again.

And it’s good, Bones’ lips soft under his, Bones’ tongue sliding into his mouth as he returns the kiss. Bones’ hand is in his hair, and Jim feels himself being pressed against the rug from where they’re sitting. Feels Bones slide on top of him, still kissing him. His hands slide under Jim’s shirt, stroking his sides, skimming over his ribs. Jim moans, pushing his hips up.

His hands fist in Bones’ shirt, tugging it out of the way. Bones groans, tosses his own shirt away, and pulls Jim’s over his head. The light reflects in Bones’ silver amulet around his neck as he pauses, a hand hovering over Jim’s chest, fingertips brushing a fading bruise. Jim looks up at Bones, sees the concern in his face. Jim wraps his fingers around Bones’ wrist, tugging him closer, pressing Bones’ hand to his chest.

”It’s ok, it doesn’t hurt anymore. Much.”

Bones bends down, and brushes his lips against the fading bruise. Jim hums, arching into the touch. Bones raises his head, and Jim looks into hazel eyes as he wraps his hand around Bones neck, tugging him up for another kiss.

Bones’ lips slide over his mouth, and Jim closes his eyes, taking in the sensation as Bones latches his lips to Jim’s neck, kissing and sucking a wet path to his collarbone, leaving him writhing on the carpet.

Jim loses track of time, giving in to the sensation that is Bones’ mouth on his skin, his hands exploring, his thigh between Jim’s legs, dragging against Jim’s hard-on.

“Bones!” Jim arches as nimble fingers trail over his fly, stroke down the inseam of his jeans, and up again. When Bones finally works the zipper, Jim is too impatient to wait any longer, pushing them down. His struggles to free his legs _now_ , ending up shifting the rug they’re on slightly.

“You know, I spent quite some time getting these rugs exactly where I wanted them. It’d be nice if you don’t get them all tumbled up.” Bones grumbles at him.

Jim laughs at that, laughs at Bones’ serious expression. “They’re only rugs. Besides, what else were you expecting from me?”

“To lie here and wait till I’m done?” Jim can see Bones’ eye crinkles as he smiles.

“You were taking ages.”

Bones slaps his arm affectionately. “That’s called foreplay, idiot.”

Jim cranes his neck, plants a kiss on Bones’ nose. “Not when you move so slow I start falling asleep. I’m not getting any younger here.”

“Brat.” Bones grumbles, but kisses him back, lying down next to him. They’re facing each other, and Jim trails a hand down Bones’ chest.

“You’ve been with a man before, right?”

Bones huffs out a breath. “You don’t have to ask, you were just inside my soul. Really…”

“Only wanted to be polite.”

Bones snorts, which shouldn’t be a sexy noise, but somehow he pulls it off. Jim carefully crawls over him, sliding his hand down to the waistband of Bones’ sweatpants, stroking him through his boxers, then stops. “Lube?”

Bones shoots him a glare, pushes himself up from the ground, and points his hand to the bedroom as he mutters, “Ventas.”

Jim feels a slight wind rifling through his hair, feels energy stir the hairs of the rug. Next thing he knows, Bones has a tube of lube in his hands, grinning smugly up at him.

“Show-off,” Jims smiles, swatting his leg.

“You’d rather go to the bedroom and get it yourself? I could send it back,” Bones says, extending his arm again.

“Didn’t say that,” Jim laughs, as he makes a grab for the lube. He wrestles it from Bones’ hand, and then pushes him back onto the carpet.

Bones’ expressions turns serious. “Jim, you’re just out of the hospital. I don’t think…”

“Yeah, but only because it took me ages to convince the doctors I wasn’t going to act like Napoleon, or shoot people with frozen peas, or something like that. Actually, it would’ve been ever so helpful if you could’ve turned up and told them I wasn’t making everything up.”

Bones chuckles at that, and reaches up to caress Jim’s cheek. “I would have loved to come, but I was too busy hiding from you.”

Jim smiles at that, puts the lube aside, and leans down to kiss Bones again.

After coming up for air again, it takes Jim less than three seconds to strip Bones’ pants off, pulling them down past his thighs and feet, and, finally, he has Bones naked underneath him, chest covered in a fine sheet of sweat, erection straining against his belly. Jim slowly kisses a trail from Bones’ neck down to that navel, sliding his tongue over nipples and the planes of his stomach, hands stroking up and down his sides, along his thighs. Bones arches into his touches, moans and writhes, and Jim is sure he hasn’t seen anything as arousing as this man. He’s not going to be letting go of Bones anytime soon.

He leans down to kiss the insides of Bones’ thighs, licking a path to his hips.

“Jim.” Bones’ hand comes to rest on Jim’s head, fingers raking through his hair.

Jim lets his tongue flutter against Bones erection, licks the shaft, and swallows the head, circling his tongue along it. He hears Bones curse under his breath, and lightly chuckles as he lets go again, moving his mouth further down.

He bites Bones’ thighs, then kisses the mark as Bones’ hiss turns into a groan, before crawling back up his body, aiming for the lips. After he reaches his goal, he picks up the lube again, squirts some over his fingers between kisses. He watches Bones’ eyes as he reaches down, finger grazing Bones’ hole, circling it, pushing inside.

He gets lost in the feeling of Bones around his fingers, his hitching breaths as Jim grazes his prostate, his moans when Jim adds another finger.

“And you talk about moving too slow,” Bones says an eternity later.

Jim can’t help but laugh at that as he sits back on his heels and reaches for his pants.

“Look who’s impatient now,” he says, rummaging in the pockets. Bones huffs out a breath, and Jim grins as he retrieves a condom from his jeans pocket, holding it between two fingers.

“So, can you spell this open for me?”

”Jim.” Bones sounds like he doesn’t know whether to slap or kiss Jim.

Jim makes the decision for him, bending down for another kiss as he tears open the package. He breaks the kiss reluctantly, then picks up the lube again. Looks at Bones’ face as he pulls the condom over his cock. Watches Bones’ pupils widen as he lubes himself up. Bones wraps his legs around Jim’s waist as Jim bends down for another kiss, sloppy and wet, and Jim braces himself as he finally pushes inside.

“Oh fuck, Jim!” Bones’ voice is a low growl, and Jim shivers as he pulls out again. Their eyes meet, and Jim lets out a moan as he thrust back in, burying himself to the hilt.

They settle into a steady, almost too slow rhythm, fingers digging into skin, kissing and biting at each other’s lips, and Bones arches his head.

“Jim!”

He reaches down to take Bones’ cock in his hand, slowly stroking. Bones curses him again as he rakes his nails down Jim’s back.

Jim bites down on his lower lip, speeding up his thrusts. Bones’ moans grow loader as Jim hits his prostrate with every trust, and it’s not long before Bones is crying out, coming, and Jim follows him over the edge a moment later.

They lie on the ground, both drifting in the afterglow, when Bones chuckles. “I can’t believe you didn’t get me dinner first.”

“I got you pizza!” Jim returns, waving a hand at the cold, abandoned box.

“Not the dinner I was thinking of,” Bones teases.

Jim smiles. “Don’t blame me for your high standards.”

Bones chuckles again, his eyes closed.

Jim pokes Bones side. “You wouldn’t mind handing me my pants? I’m too lazy to get up.”

Bones opens one eye to look at him. “What do you want your pants for?”

“My cigarettes are in my pants. After sex like that, I need a smoke.” Jim wriggles his eyebrows.

“You smoke in here, and I’ll throw your naked butt into the street.”

Jim opens his mouth to reply when Spock, wandering out of the bedroom, lets out a high pitched sound.

Bones props himself up on one elbow and watches the cat hop up on the mantelpiece. “You stay out of it, or you’re going right with him.” Jim can’t repress a smile at the one-sided conversation. He loves it when Bones bickers with his cat.

Spock eyes Bones right back, turns three times on the mantelpiece, and lies down, his back turned demonstratively to them.

Bones scowls, his head hitting the rug. “One of these days, I’m getting rid of that stupid fur ball.”

“Don’t. I like him.”

Bones rolls his eyes. “Course you do. He’s on your side.”

Jim trails fingers over Bones’ chest, following the scab that remains from the fight. “You didn’t want me to shoot him,” he suddenly remembers.

Bones blinks at him, confused. “What?”

“Back in the warehouse. You shouted at me to not shoot him.”

Bones wraps his arm around Jim’s shoulders. “I was afraid he would cast his death curse at you. Which he did. You’re lucky I was between you and him.”

“His what?” Jim asks. This magic stuff is going to give him severe headaches one day.

Bones looks into his eyes. “Death curse. When a wizard is killed, he can throw all of his remaining power at the person he wants to take with him.”

“And Nero was about to do that?”

“He _did_ do that. I was able to shield in time, though.”

“I guess I should to thank you, then.” Jim smirks suggestively at Bones, who snorts, fingertips brushing the skin on his shoulder.

Jim’s fingers start moving again, tangle in the leather cord of the amulet around Bones’ neck.

“Did I imagine it, or was this thing actually casting off light that night?”

“You didn’t.”

“Show me?” Jim asks, eager to actually see Bones do magic.

“Jim, I’m a wizard, not a cheap party trick.”

Jim snorts. “Says the man who conjured up lube.”

Bones slaps at his thigh for that jab. Jim laughs, grabbing his hand and snuggling up against the warm body next to him. “You know, you could do with some heating in here.”

“Electricity, remember? It wouldn’t work for long, anyway,” Bones says with a shrug.

“But I’m freezing here,” Jim complains in a half-mumble .

Bones hoists himself up with a grumble, vanishing into the bedroom. He comes back with a washcloth in his hands, murmuring, and bends down to clean Jim off.

Jim closes his eyes, humming as the lukewarm water hits his skin. It feels amazing, just lying there as Bones gentlly touches him. It’s over too soon, and he feels himself hoisted to his feet.

He blinks open his eyes. “Where are we going?”

“I’m not staying on the damn floor all night just to listen to you whine about the cold.”

Jim lets himself be led into the bedroom, grinning all the while at Bones’ back.

He’s still grinning as he slides under the covers and reaches out to draw Bones closer.

“Cuddling, Jim? Really?” Bones grumbles.

“It’s that, or you wake to a frozen corpse in the morning. You decide,” Jim says into Bones’ neck, lips brushing the skin.

He can’t make out what Bones mumbles under his breath, but it sounds a lot like “Gonna make me go mad one of these days.”

He smiles into Bones neck as his eyes fall shut.

+~+

When Jim wakes up he’s freezing. Leonard apparently survives without central heating by hoarding all the covers during the night. Typical.

Jim props himself up on one elbow, watches Bones in his sleep. It’s the first time he’s seen the man really relaxed, all worries gone from his face. It makes him look younger and even hotter than normal. He smiles, tracing a finger along Bones’ jaw. The other man grunts in his sleep, and rolls over, turning his back to Jim.

So no early morning cuddling then.

He shuffles through the bedroom, wishing for a thick bathrobe and winces as he enters the bathroom. He hadn’t expected it to be even colder than the bedroom.

The room has an almost cavernous feel about it, dark walls and ceiling making him feel claustrophobic, and he shivers.

To add to the atmosphere, Leonard has installed a wooden seat on the toilet, and a photo of Gollum on the wall behind it smiles down on anyone in the room.

Cheery.

Wondering if icicles spring from the showerhead in the winter, he turns on the water. After fiddling with the knobs, he enters the shower, whistling quietly under his breath.

“Oh fuck!” Jim shouts as cold water hits his skin.

He turns off the water immediately, teeth clattering. Dimly he hears the bathroom door banging open and turns as Bones storms in.

“What? What happens?” Bones yells, eyes scanning the bathroom.

“Couldn’t you have mentioned you don’t have hot water here? I’m freezing my ass off!” Jim says shivering.

Bones looks at him, and scowls. “I told you, no electricity. Nothing that could blow up in my face when I’m least expecting it.”

“Yeah, I gathered as much. I just didn’t think that meant no hot water either,” Jim says, teeth clattering.

“Well, duh.” Bones crosses his arms over his chest.

“Duh, my ass. Next date will so be at my place.”

Bones raises an eyebrow at that. “Yeah? Who says? How do you even know there’ll be a second time?”

“Because I know you can’t resist my charms. And you don’t want to miss out on the shower sex.” Jim leers as he rubs his hands over his arms.

Bones snorts, grabbing for a towel. “Your ego is really too much for one person. Why I even put up with you...”

Jim gets out of the shower, still shivering, although he can’t help his smile. “Told you, irresistible. _And_ I’m the only person willing to put up with _you_.”

Bones rolls his eyes, but there’s a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth.

Jim comes to a halt mere inches away and reaches out to pull Bones hand to his still dripping chest. “See how cold I am? This is attempted murder.”

“You get used to it,” Bones says, hand trailing along wet skin.

“No wonder you have no sex live. That shower kills everything.”

Bones lifts the towel, wrapping it around Jim shoulders, his hand traveling down to Jim’s navel. “Really?”

Jim shifts closer, pressing against a warm, firm chest. “Well, maybe not everything.”

“What about we head back to bed and see about making you warm?”

Jim grins at such a cheesy line, but gives in when Bones tugs at the towel, stepping backwards to lead Jim back to the bedroom. Never breaking eye contact, he feels Bones bump into the bed, then sit down on the edge. He lets himself be dragged onto Bones lap, flannel pajama bottoms rubbing against his naked thighs. Jim leans forward, meeting Bones’ lips as he moves his hand to Bones’ neck, petting the short hair there.

Bones’ arms wrap around him, pulling him closer. Jim grinds his hips down, rutting into Bones’ lap, moaning into the kiss. Then Bones flips them around, and Jim’s back hits the mattress with a squeak of protest from the springs. Those gorgeous hands of Bones’ start roaming up and down his body, warming him up in all the best ways. As his cock twitches with interest, Bones props himself up, hands on both sides of Jim’s head and looks down at him with a serious expression.  
“You know, hanging around with me is dangerous.”

“Pff. I’m a cop. I put myself in dangerous situations every day.”

“Jim, I’m serious. There are people and creatures who don’t like me, and I don’t want to put you into more danger than I already did.” Bones frowns down at him.

“Oh, thank you, my knight in shining armor,” Jim says sarcastically.

Then, quieter: “Really, Bones, I’m not afraid. Let them come. And stop thinking. It only deepens your frown line.” Jim reaches up to trace it with his fingers.

  
“That wasn’t there before I met you,” Bones says with a mock-pout.

“Hmh, sure. How about I do something about it?” And with that, he flips them around, kissing Bones before he can say another word.


	5. Epilogue

Leonard does some research, assisted by a helpful Jim, to find out Nero’s real name. And when Nero’s corpse is released, Leonard organizes a simple, straight-forward burial. Something he hopes the man would have liked.

He visits the grave a few days afterwards, looks down onto the simple tombstone. Reading the date of birth he realizes that Nero - Bruce - had only been 32 when he died.

Leonard feels cold.

He pulls a plastic frog from his pocket, fiddles with it as he seals the spell he had worked back home. He feels the familiar tingle of magic, and he sets the frog down on the stone, then takes a step back, his eyes fixed to the horizon.

Jim, a cigarette behind his ear, steps up next to him, takes his hand. “You think it’s necessary? Dead is dead, right?”

Leonard watches dark clouds drift along the sky, smells the approaching rain in the air. He placed a protection spell around the frog, just in case, and ignores the frown Jim sends at him. He brushes his thumb along Jim’s palm as he says, “With wizards, you can never be sure.”

They walk back to the car, still holding hands. It starts raining, and the drops of water on Leonard’s face hide the tears running down his cheeks.

The End


End file.
